LIBRARY 

THE  UNIVERSITY 
OF  CALIFORNIA 

SANTA  BARBARA 


PRESENTED  BY 

DANIEL  FITZMAURICE 


MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 


MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS 
CONFLICT 

A  Popular  Exposition  of  Psychoanalysis 

BY 

WILFRID  LAY,  PH.D. 


For  there  is  nothing  hid  which  shall  not  be  manifested. 

—Mark  iv:  22 


NEW   YORK 

DODD,  MEAD  AND  COMPANY 
1917 


LIBRARY 

OF  CALIFOBNI, 
SANTA  BA&BARA 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.    INTRODUCTION        .......  i 

II.    THE  UNKNOWN   ELEMENT  IN  ACTION  14 

III.  JTHE  -CEDIPUS  MYTH     ......  18 

IV.  THE  FORE-CONSCIOUS       .....  38 

V.    THE  UNCONSCIOUS.    (DESCRIPTIVE)     .  43 

A.   Complete  Retentiveness    .....  45 

•              .....  50 


C.  Independent  Vitality       .....  65 

D.  Symbolism   ........  67 

E.  The  Censor         .......  71 

F.  Sublimation         .......  80 

G.  Introversion        .....  82 
H.   Pleasure-Pain  versus  Reality        ...  85 

I.   Regression    ........  88 

J.  Universality  of  Manifestation      ...  90 

VI.    THE  UNCONSCIOUS   (DYNAMIC)        .      .  93 

A.  Craving  or  Reality?        .....  93 

B.  Where  Do  Thoughts  Come  From?     .       -  98 

C.  Resistances  .       .       ......  107 

D.  Conflicts       ........  no 

£.  ^Cptflplexes    ........  H2 

F.  Phobias         ......             .  118 

G.  Our  Mental  Attitude       .      .       .      .      .  121 


vi  CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

VII.    THE  INDIVIDUAL  PSYCHE     ....  127 

VIII.    DREAMS 144 

IX.    TWO  KINDS  OF  THINKING     ....  176 

X.    EVERYDAY  LIFE 200 

XI.    PSYCHOTHERAPY          220 

A.  The  Moral  Struggle 220 

B.  Reasoning  by  Analogy 233 

C.  Psychic  Gravitation 244 

D.  The  Transference 260 

XII.    EDUCATIONAL  APPLICATIONS     .      .      .265 

A.  The  Object  of  Mental  Activity          .       .  266 

B.  The  Father-Image 273 

C.  The  Superiority  Feeling 280 

D.  "He  Irritates  Me" 284 

E.  Memory  Work 293 

F.  Abstract  Thinking 301 

G.  Hate,  Anger  and  Love 304 

XIII.    CONCLUSION 314 

INDEX                               317 


MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 


MAN'S    UNCONSCIOUS 
CONFLICT 

CHAPTER  I 

INTRODUCTION 

IN  the  Greek  mythology  the  Titans  are  the  chil- 
dren of  Earth  and  Heaven  and,  because  they 
warred  with  the  gods,  were  cast  into  the  gulf  of 
Tartarus,  where  they  lie  prostrate,  but  occa- 
sionally, becoming  restive,  shake  their  bonds  and 
in  so  doing  cause  the  earth  to  tremble.  In  each 
one  of  us  there  lives  a  Titan.  As  the  Titans 
represented  the  crude  forces  of  nature  that  were 
later  brought  into  subjection  by  the  gods  who 
introduced  a  reign  of  order,  so  the  Titan  that  is 
in  each  one  of  us  represents  the  primal  impulses 
of  animal  life  which  have  through  the  ages  been 
brought  into  some  semblance  of  order  by  the 
force  of  society.  But  just  as  the  Titans  in  the 
old  mythology  made  themselves  felt  in  disturb- 
ances of  the  equilibrium  of  the  world,  so  some- 
times do  the  Titans  *  residing  in  us  all  break 

*  Freud,  in  his  Interpretation  of  Dreams,  p.  435,  says:  "These 
ever-moving  and  so  to  speak  immortal  wishes  of  our  Unconscious, 


2      MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

loose  and  do  much  damage  in  our  daily  life. 
And  as  the  Titans  were  chained  in  the  deep  pit, 
and  could  never  show  their  faces  to  the  light  of 
day,  so  these  primordial  vital  forces  are  generally 
controlled  by  the  restraints  of  organised  society, 
and  are  as  little  in  evidence  to  most  people  as  if 
they  too  were  chained  at  the  bottom  of  a  pit. 
Their  writhings,  however,  are  not  without  effect 
on  our  daily  thoughts  and  on  our  bodily  func- 
tions, as  will  be  seen  in  the  chapters  that  follow. 
That  part  of  our  mental  life  of  which  as  a  gen- 
eral rule  we  know  nothing,  but  which  exerts  a 
great  influence  upon  our  actions,  is  known  to  the 
newer  psychology  as  the  Unconscious,  and  in  this 
book  I  frequently  refer  to  it  as  the  unknown 
Titan.  It  is  well  to  be  informed  of  this  archaic 
being  which  constitutes  so  great  a  part  of  our 
ego,  for  if  rightly  understood  it  will  enable  us  to 
develop  all  the  power  that  we  have,  up  to  the 
limit  of  our  possibility,  while,  on  the  other  hand, 
an  ignorance  of  its  very  existence  and  of  its 
effect  on  human  conduct  has  been  the  cause  of 
much  misunderstanding  and  sorrow.  It  is  the 
hope  of  the  present  writer  that  some,  at  least,  of 
the  unhappiness  of  this  life  we  lead  may  be  seen 

which  reminds  us  of  the  Titans  of  the  myth,  on  whom  since  the 
earliest  times  has  pressed  heavily  the  weight  of  the  mountains 
which  were  hurled  upon  them  by  the  victorious  gods  and  which 
even  now  tremble  at  the  occasional  quivering  of  their  limbs." 


INTRODUCTION  3 

to  be  as  unnecessary  as  it  really  is,  when  a  deeper 
insight  is  gained  into  the  real  causes  of  much  that 
we  now  misunderstand. 

The  title-page  of  Bulfinch's  Age  of  Fable  is 
embellished  with  the  following  stanza  of  Barry 
Cornwall : 

O  ye  delicious  fables!  where  the  wave 

And  woods  were  peopled,  and  the  air,  with 
things 

So  lonely!  why,  ah!  why  has  science  grave 
Scattered  afar  your  sweet  imaginings? 

It  is  a  feature  of  the  new  science  of  psycho- 
analysis, touched  upon  in  the  following  pages 
from  time  to  time,  that  it  has  given  a  fresh  interest 
and  value  to  these  sweet  imaginings  of  mythology, 
and  instead  of  banishing  them  afar,  has  brought 
them  to  our  very  doors — nay,  into  our  very 
hearts — in  a  new  and  original  way.  Science, 
while  perhaps  not  yet  entitled  to  be  called  gay, 
is  not,  in  the  results  of  psychoanalytic  research, 
any  longer  to  be  truly  called  grave,  for  it  has 
through  its  workers,  Freud  and  others,  opened  up 
a  prospect  which  is  full  of  promise  for  the  re- 
moval of  much  that  has  been  grotesque,  not  to 
say  gruesome,  in  our  social  life. 

The  foundations  of  a  new  psychology  of  cer- 
tain aspects  of  a  limited  number  of  mental  aber- 


4      MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

rations  were  laid  down  in  Vienna  about  1890  by 
a  physician  specialising  in  nervous  diseases,  Dr. 
Sigmund  Freud.  He  disclaims  having  made  a 
complete  system,  either  of  philosophy  or  of  psy- 
chology, but  the  principles  which  he  stated  have 
found  so  wide  an  application  that  the  Freudian 
psychology,  the  details  of  which  have  been  and 
are  being  worked  out  by  numerous  psychologists 
and  physicians  both  in  Europe  and  in  this  coun- 
try, seems  likely  not  only  to  become  a  complete 
philosophy  of  life,  but,  in  its  practical  results,  to 
be  more  valuable  than  all  previous  philosophies, 
idealised  as  they  have  been  out  of  one  man's 
thoughts  or  elaborated  from  the  conversations  of 
many  men.  For  its  application  is  primarily  per- 
sonal and  individual,  however  general  its  laws 
may  be,  and  its  aim  in  the  hands  of  its  founder 
has  been  the  consistent  one  of  alleviating  human 
suffering,  both  mental  and  physical;  and  we  all 
know  how  very  real  mental  suffering  may  some- 
times be. 

It  seems  unique,  and  yet,  in  view  of  the  prag- 
matic trend  of  philosophy  during  the  last  decades, 
quite  in  accordance  with  the  spirit  of  modern 
civilisation,  that  a  philosophy,  including  a  psy- 
chology,— sciences  which,  in  the  past,  have  been 
associated  with  anything  but  practical  ends, — 
should  be  devoted  principally  to  the  alleviation 
of  human  physical  ills.  The  age  that  has  seen 


INTRODUCTION  5 

the  telephone,  and  wireless  telegraphy,  and  aero- 
nautics developed  to  a  practical  point  of  useful- 
ness has  now  turned  its  attention  toward  making 
what  always  before  seemed  in  the  clouds  appear 
to  be  amenable  to  human  control  and  for  human 
practical  purposes  or  curing  physical  ills.  Thus 
has  Freud  become  the  first  aeronaut  in  the  empy- 
rean of  the  human  mind,  and  has  reconnoitred 
and  brought  back  to  us  exact  information  con- 
cerning matters  of  which  otherwise  we  should 
have  known  nothing. 

It  seems  marvellous  that  we  can  at  last  fly  in 
the  air,  and  that  we  have  used  our  airships  for 
destruction  in  warfare.  It  also  seems  quite  as 
marvellous  that  we  have  learned  how  to  enlist 
the  curative  power  of  nature  by  an  appeal  to  the 
emotions  through  the  intellect.  For  an  increas- 
ingly large  number  of  human  ills  we  now  go  to 
specialists  and  physicians  who  never  write  a  pre- 
scription for  any  drug  for  us,  never  give  us  a 
diet  list  or  prescribe-  exercise  or  rest.  We  tell 
them  our  bodily  ills  and  they  talk  to  us.  There 
is  no  manipulation,  there  are  no  hypnotic  passes, 
but  there  is  the  most  patient  and  detailed  study 
of  our  mental  attitudes  toward  our  ills,  there  is 
the  most  painstaking  inquiry  into  everything  we 
have  ever  thought  about  them.  This  mental 
specialist  takes  a  sort  of  spiritual  inventory  of 
our  beliefs,  suppositions,  misbeliefs,  supersti- 


6      MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

tions  and  queer  ideas  about  our  own  mental  and 
bodily  physiology.  We  all  have  strange  miscon- 
ceptions about  nutrition,  growth,  reproduction! 
This  new  variety  of  specialist  listens  for  days  at 
a  time  and  finally  tells  us  some  few  truths  which 
act  dynamically  on  our  mental  powers,  and  we 
begin  to  see  things  about  life  which  we  never 
dreamed  of  before  or  did  not  know  we  dreamed 
of.  We  begin  to  put  in  order  the  disordered 
thoughts  which  we  have  been  thinking  for  years, 
from  our  earliest  infancy  indeed,  and  to  associate 
these  thoughts  as  they  should  be  associated  in 
order  to  make  us  as  much  use  to  society  as  we 
could  possibly  be.  Then  the  health  we  may  have 
lost,  whatever  disorders  of  a  physical  nature  we 
may  have  had,  caused  by  the  disorderliness  of  our 
mental  operations,  commences  to  come  back  to 
us. 

In  comparing  Freud  to  a  psychical  aviator,  I 
might  liken  the  medium  in  which  he  has  navigated 
so  surprisingly  to  the  world  of  dreams.  Perhaps 
nothing,  to  the  so-called  practical  person,  looks 
so  impractical  as  this  very  world  of  dreams,  but 
nothing  would  a  few  years  ago  have  been  thought 
more  ridiculously  impossible  than  that  we  should 
be  able  to  fly  twenty  miles  in  less  than  thirty 
minutes  to  take  lunch  with  a  friend  in  a  neigh- 
bouring city.  Remarkable  advances  have  been 
made  recently  in  the  use  in  large  manufactures  of 


INTRODUCTION  7 

quantities  of  by-products  which  were  formerly 
thrown  into  the  streams  that  furnished  the  power 
for  the  machinery.  We  can  say  that  advances 
quite  as  remarkable  have  been  made  in  the  use 
found  for  what  once  were  regarded  as  by-products 
of  the  mind.  Certainly  the  dream  was  regarded, 
particularly  in  the  earlier  days  of  science,  as  no 
better  than  a  by-product  of  the  mind.  Just  as 
the  factory  had  to  make  a  salable  material  out 
of  its  waste  matter,  in  order  to  make  up  for  the 
money  formerly  paid  for  carting  away  what  had 
accumulated  in  the  river,  so  the  modern  psy- 
chologist has,  as  it  were,  been  forced  to  make 
something  serviceable  out  of  the  dream.  And  he 
has  done  so  in  an  extraordinary  manner,  the  full 
narrative  of  which  will  some  day  be  the  most 
striking  chapter  in  the  history  of  science. 

The  name  given  by  Freud  himself  to  the 
science  is  psychoanalysis,  spelled  also  psychanaly- 
sis,  or  the  analysis  of  the  psyche.  The  psyche 
is  not  merely  the  mind  regarded  as  a  product, 
a  stationary  or  crystallised  object  which  can  be 
cut  and  dried  and  labelled.  The  mind  and  soul 
and  character  and  body  as  a  connected,  organic 
whole,  and  its  functions  (or  what  it  does  and  how 
it  changes),  are  the  subject  of  psychoanalysis 
more  than  how  its  results  or  finite  outward  mani-j 
festations  can  be  classified.  Psychoanalysis  natu- 
rally suggests  psychosynthesis  as  a  more  construe- 


8       MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

tive  procedure,  and  that  is,  indeed,  the  ultimate 
aim  of  psychoanalysis;  not  merely  to  take  apart 
but  to  put  together  again,  following  a  plan  which 
is  along  the  lines  of  the  greatest  usefulness  to 
society. 

I  should  have  been  more  exact,  however,  in  the 
simile  drawn  above  if  I  had  said  that  the  atmos- 
phere in  which  the  latest  psychological  aviators 
have  sailed  so  successfully  is  the  Unconscious. 
For  that  part  of  the  mind  which  before  the 
science  of  psychoanalysis  we  knew  almost  noth- 
ing about,  and  which  is  unknowable  except  by 
means  of  this  new  instrument  of  precision, 
psychoanalysis,  has  been  termed  the  Uncon- 
scious. 

The  Unconscious  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  the 
unknowing  part  of  the  mind  but  only  as  the 
unknown  part.  From  one  point  of  view  there  is 
no  such  thing  as  the  unknowing  part  of  the  mind, 
because  the  mind  is  essentially  that  part  of  the 
personality  that  is  knowing;  knowing  with  greater 
or  less  intensity,  and  knowing  now  one  and  now 
another  object,  but  always  knowing  something, 
from  the  first  day  of  life  until  the  last.  But  the 
Unconscious  may  be  described  as  the  generally 
unknown  realms  of  the  ego,  into  the  seemingly 
bottomless  abyss  of  which  the  sensations  and 
perceptions  of  the  individual  are  constantly  sink- 
ing, and  from  which,  no  matter  how  hard  we  try, 


INTRODUCTION  9 

we  cannot,  without  the  help  which  analytic 
psychology  offers  us,  recover  anything  except  a 
very  limited  amount  of  visual,  verbal  or  other 
memories. 

In  this  book  an  attempt  is  made  to  show  the 
Unconscious  operating  in  every  act  of  our  lives, 
not  merely  in  the  actions  ordinarily  known  as 
unconscious  or  automatic,  but  in  that  part  of  our 
activity  to  which  we  attribute  the  most  vivid  con- 
sciousness. For  in  a  certain  sense  we  are  most 
helped  or  hindered  by  the  unconscious  part  of 
ourselves  when  we  think  we  are  most  keenly 
alive.  Our  Unconscious  pervades  our  conduct  in 
the  most  minute  details,  just  as  the  air  we  breathe 
is  forced  by  our  blood  through  our  tissues,  and 
it  might  almost  be  said  that  it  is  as  important, 
and  as  great  in  extent,  when  compared  with  the 
conscious  present,  as  the  air,  so  small  a  part  of 
which  we  breathe,  is  great  in  extent  in  propor- 
tion to  the  minute  particles  of  it  that  we  take  into 
our  lungs. 

In  the  spacious  atmosphere  of  the  Unconscious 
our  dreams,  both  those  of  our  sleep  and  those 
of  our  waking  state,  are  but  one  form  out  of  the 
multitude  of  varieties  of  the  manifestations  of 
the  Unconscious.  The  present  scope  of  psycho- 
analysis has  extended  far  beyond  the  purely 
therapeutic  one  originally  outlined  by  the  founder. 
The  psychoanalytic  interpretation  of  human  con- 


io    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

duct  has  been  shown  by  many  recent  writers  to 
be  applicable  to  mythology,  to  sociology  and  to 
education,  to  mention  only  three  out  of  the 
numerous  spheres  of  human  thought  in  which  it 
illuminates  what  has  before  been  dark. 

Much  indignation  has  been  expressed  by  some 
of  Freud's  critics  because  he  has  treated  sexual 
matters  in  such  an  outspoken  way.  He  has  dis- 
cussed all  matters  that  are  generally  considered 
sexual  in  a  manner  that  these  critics  consider 
needlessly  full  and  explicit,  but  he  has  done  more, 
in  that  he  has  included  a  number  of  subjects  as 
sexual  which  the  ordinary  person  did  not  know 
were  sexual;  in  order  words,  he  is  blamed  for 
finding  sexual  reasons  for  a  large  proportion  of 
human  acts,  a  procedure  which  arouses  the 
antagonism  of  many  persons  whose  actions  are  of 
such  a  nature  as  to  be  very  intimately  touched  by 
any  reference  to  things  purely  sexual.  But  the 
fact  remains,  after  all  the  emotions  are  removed 
from  the  discussion,  that  if  certain  kinds  of 
behaviour  have  sexual  causes,  and  we  do  not 
know  it,  we  are  being  helped  and  not  hindered 
by  having  the  real  nature  of  that  behaviour 
pointed  out  to  us.  For  example,  if  it  has  been 
repeatedly  shown  by  analyses  of  many  persons 
that  a  young  unmarried  woman's  dream  of  a 
burglar  entering  her  room  is  in  most  cases  based 
on  a  crassly  sexual  desire  of  her  Unconscious,  it 


INTRODUCTION  n 

will  certainly  profit  the  young  lady  to  be  told  not 
only  that  it  represents  a  craving  on  the  part  of 
her  Unconscious  for  the  very  thing  that  the 
dream  pictures,  and  that  the  number  of  persons 
who  know  this  fact  is  increasing  every  day,  but 
also  that  it  is  not  an  uncommon  dream  of  virgins 
and  that  it  is  absolutely  no  derogation  to  her 
character.  But  this  is  what  Freud  has  done.  He 
has  told  the  ignorant  and  the  innocent  alike,  with 
scientific  impartiality,  that  they  are  ignorant  of 
what  goes  on  in  their  Unconscious  and  why  they 
are  ignorant  and  the  results  of  their  ignorance. 
It  is  of  course  not  pleasant  to  learn  of  any  defect 
in  our  knowledge,  particularly  that  part  of  our 
knowledge  which  concerns  the  most  personal  rela- 
tions of  our  ego,  and  Freud  and  his  followers 
have  been  reviled  for  their  truth,  even  by  those 
who  are  supposed  to  be  in  possession  of  the 
calmness  and  coolness  coming  from  scientific 
work,  with  a  vehemence  which  is  born  only  of  a 
strong  need  for  defence.  But  the  Freudians 
have  shown  that  if  we  feel  strongly  that  a  cer- 
tain tenet  needs  vigorous  defence  we  are  admit- 
ting to  ourselves  that  it  is  weak  and  cannot 
defend  itself.  Few  persons  think  it  necessary  to 
defend  what  is  accepted  by  many.  No  one  would 
think  of  advocating  the  continuance  of  breathing, 
for  instance.  But  if  a  seer  of  truths  finds  his 
fellows  universally  indulging  in  a  habit  which 


12     MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

is  both  foolish  and  dangerous,  foolish  because 
conditioned  by  ignorance  and  dangerous  because 
sapping  the  vital  forces  of  almost  all  individuals, 
more  insidious  and  more  unknown  than  infantile 
paralysis,  but  infinitely  more  widespread,  he  will 
be  opposed  by  the  united  strength  of  those  who 
hear  him,  gradually  tolerated  by  those  who  will 
listen  to  him  and  followed  by  those  who  under- 
stand him. 

In  order  not  to  offend  persons  who  would 
close  their  ears  if  the  sexual  were  mentioned  in 
too  plain  terms,  I  have  chosen  to  avoid  as  far  as 
possible  emphasising  the  "  medical "  or  "  ana- 
tomical "  features  of  the  topics  treated,  leaving 
the  reader  to  infer  that  when  among  other  expres- 
sions I  may  have  occasion  to  mention  "  hunger  " 
I  may  be  referring  to  the  physical  sexual  crav- 
ing, and  to  make  analogous  inferences  in  other 
spheres.  I  have  also  used  the  word  craving 
throughout  in  place  of  the  Freudian  word  libido, 
which  has  for  the  American  ear  a  connotation 
somewhat  different  from  the  European. 

Readers  desiring  to  follow  the  subject  of  the 
Unconscious  still  farther  are  referred  to  the  fol- 
lowing books  in  English: 

i 

Adler:   The  Neurotic  Constitution. 
Brill :      Psychoanalysis. 
Morbid  Dreads. 


INTRODUCTION  13 

Coriat:  Abnormal  Psychology. 

The  Meaning  of  Dreams. 
Freud:    The  Interpretation  of  Dreams.. 

(Containing  an  extensive  bibliography) 

The  Psychopathology  of  Everyday  Life. 

Leonardo  da  Find. 

Wit  and  Its  Relation   to   the   Uncon- 
scious. 

Hitschmann :  Freud's  Theories  of  the  Neuroses. 
Holt:      The  Freudian  Wish. 
Jones:    Papers  on  Psychoanalysis. 
Jung:      Psychology  of  the  Unconscious. 

Analytical  Psychology. 
Pfister :    The  Psychoanalytic  Method. 
Prince :  The  Unconscious. 
White:  Mechanisms  of  Character  Formation. 

One  periodical  in  this  country  deals  exclusively 
with  psychoanalytic  subjects:  The  Psychoanalytic 
Review,  a  quarterly  edited  by  Smith  Ely  Jelliffe, 
M.D.,  and  William  A.  White,  M.D. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  UNKNOWN  ELEMENT  IN  ACTION 

A  CLASSICAL  illustration  of  the  power  of  the 
hypnotiser  over  his  subject  is  the  following:  The 
hypnotiser  tells  the  hypnotised  person  that  when 
he  awakes  he  will  take  a  chair  from  the  floor  and 
put  it  on  the  table.  He  also  tells  him  at  another 
time  that  when  he  is.  awake,  and  at  a  certain  hour, 
he  will  wipe  his  face  with  his  handkerchief. 
What  is  most  interesting  to  us  here  is,  however, 
the  answers  that  he  gives  to  questions  about  why 
he  did  these  things.  He  always  has  a  plausible 
reason.  He  says  that  he  found  the  chair  in  the 
way  and  wished  to  put  it  out  of  the  way.  Also 
he  says  that  he  found  that  his  face  was  perspir- 
ing and  that  was  why  he  wiped  it  with  his  hand- 
kerchief. The  hypnotiser  and  the  spectators  in 
this  little  comedy  are  in  the  position  of  the  gods, 
for  they  know  the  real  cause  of  these  actions  and 
the  deluded  subject  does  not.  He  really  thinks 
that  the  causes  were  as  he  stated,  but  we  know 
whence  came  the  idea  which  he  carried  out.  In 
the  world  of  everyday  life  we  are  all  of  us  in 
much  the  same  situation  as  the  hypnotised  sub- 

14 


UNKNOWN  ELEMENT  IN  ACTION     15 

ject.  It  will  be  seen  later  that  the  hypnotiser  in 
our  everyday  life  is  a  part  of  our  own  selves,  a 
very  important  and  a  very  extensive  part  of  our 
personalities.  In  a  sense  we  are  all  hypnotising 
ourselves  all  the  time.  A  section  of  our  ego  is 
the  subject,  a  very  small  section  indeed,  and  all 
the  rest  of  our  personality  is  the  hypnotiser.  In 
short,  we  are  unaware  of  the  real  causes  of  why 
we  act  as  we  do  in  a  great  proportion  of  our 
daily  life.  We  are  directed  to  do  this  and  that 
by  the  resultant  states  of  mind  which  have  ac- 
cumulated in  the  all-retentive  storehouses  of  our 
subliminal  memory  and  which  we  may  truthfully 
say  we  have  forgotten,  though  they  are  in  our 
memory.  They  have  been  subject  to  retention, 
but  are  impossible  of  recall.  The  hypnotic  state, 
in  the  illustration  cited  above,  is  a  sort  of  rapid 
process  of  forgetting.  The  idea  of  putting  the 
chair  on  the  table  was  in  the  mind  of  the  sub- 
ject all  the  time,  so  we  may  say  that  he  remem- 
bered it.  But  it  had  passed  out  of  his  conscious- 
ness, and  so  we  may  say  that  he  had  forgotten 
it.  Now,  the  case  is  about  the  same  with  all  of 
us,  except  that  instead  of  our  rapidly  forgetting 
some  recent  thing,  we  have  gradually  forgotten, 
in  the  same  sense  of  having  stored  it  away  where 
it  could  not  be  called  up  at  will,  almost  every- 
thing that  we  ever  experienced.  Thus  we  see 
that  there  is  a  discrepancy  between  our  present 


1 6     MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

thoughts  and  our  present  actions,  which  makes 
our  actions  so  often  seem,  even  to  ourselves,  so 
very  inconsistent. 

Too  much  emphasis  cannot  be  placed  on  the 
fact  that  the  real  causes  of  what  we  do  in  our 
acts  from  hour  to  hour  are  hidden  from  us  and 
that  the  majority  of  assigned  reasons  are  mere 
pretexts,  the  real  motives  being  in  the  Uncon- 
scious, and  therefore  absolutely  inaccessible  to  us. 
It  is  only  after  a  thorough  analysis  at  the  hands 
of  a  trained  analyst  .that  anyone  can  gain  an 
insight  into  the  mechanisms  that  motivate  not 
only  our  extraordinary  but  our  ordinary  acts. 
Our  preferences  for  or  avoidance  of  specific 
foods,  occupations,  pastimes  and  persons  are  as 
a  rule  never  analysed  by  any  except  the  specialist 
in  psychoanalysis.  Our  motives  remain  in  the 
Unconscious  because  they  are  asocial, — that  is, 
destructive  of  the  organisation  of  society, — and 
continue  to  be  hidden  from  us  before,  during  and 
after  the  performance  of  the  act.  "  Forgive 
them,  for  they  know  not  what  they  do  "  is  quite 
as  applicable  to  the  everyday  acts  of  everyday 
people  as  to  the  acts  of  those  who  crucified  Christ. 

Jones,  in  his  treatment  of  the  subject  of  ration- 
alisation, which  is  the  name  he  applies  to  the 
tendency  of  all  of  us  to  assign  a  conscious  reason 
to  the  acts  which  are  motivated  by  the  wishes 
of  the  Unconscious,  instances  the  choice  of  a 


UNKNOWN  ELEMENT  IN  ACTION     17 

religious  or  political  creed  as  a  case  where  the 
real  and  the  apparent  motives  are  quite  likely  to 
be  different.  In  the  chapter  on  the  unconscious 
factor  in  everyday  life  will  be  found  examples  of 
actions  which  seem  unaccountable,  and  indeed 
are  unaccountable  except  on  the  grounds  of  their 
having  been  motivated  by  the  unconscious  wish. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   OEDIPUS   MYTH 

IF  we  think  about  what  we  have  done  we  are 
rarely  satisfied  with  it.  We  are  much  more  likely 
to  be  satisfied  with  or  to  approve  what  we  are  go- 
ing to  do.  There  is  so  frequently  an  indefinable 
dissatisfaction  with  what  we  have  accomplished,  a 
dissatisfaction  which  comes  from  a  sense  of  not 
being  able  to  know  why  we  did  all  or  at  any  rate 
a  part  of  what  we  did.  Why  did  we  leave  unmen- 
tioned,  in  a  conversation  with  a  friend,  exactly 
the  facts  that  we  consciously  most  wished  to 
mention?  Why  did  we  forget  this  person's  name, 
or  that  person's  existence?  Why  in  general  is 
our  action  so  incomplete,  compared  with  what  we 
could  have  wished?  What  factor  is  it  in  our 
lives  that  has  exercised  control  over  us  at  a  critical 
time,  at  a  time  when  we  had  to  act  rapidly  and 
almost  without  thinking?  If  we  ourselves  had 
known  and  had  been  able  to  get  control  over  this 
part  of  ourselves  which  was  the  determining  fac- 
tor in  our  action  now  under  review,  we  should 
now  be  so  much  better  satisfied  with  our  actions. 
To  all  thinking  persons  it  is  evident  that  only  a 

iS 


THE  OEDIPUS  MYTH  19 

part  of  our  actions  from  hour  to  hour  are  abso- 
lutely within  our  control.  For  instance,  what  we 
say.  In  a  heated  argument  we  all  say  things  we 
do  not  feel  altogether  like  backing  up  when  we 
have  cooled  off  a  bit. 

In  times  of  great  excitement,  in  keenly  vivid 
living,  we  all  recognise  that  we  are  impelled  by 
a  power  over  which  we  do  not  have  complete 
control.  We  are  borne  along  by  a  force  which 
we  do  not  possess  at  the  other  times  when  we 
are  not  acting  or  thinking  so  keenly.  In  times 
of  great  stimulation  we  get  an  intense  pleasure 
from  the  employment  of  large  amounts  of  our 
strength,  mental  or  physical,  amounts  of  power 
that  sometimes  surprise  us,  for  we  did  not  know 
we  had  it,  and  which  give  us  the  feeling  that  we 
are  drawing  upon  a  source  of  power  that  at  other 
times  does  not  belong  to  us.  There  is  even  a 
doubt  in  our  minds  sometimes  that  the  power  we 
exercise  in  these  exalted  times  is  in  reality  not  our 
own  power,  but  belongs  to  some  other  than  us. 
We  do  not  know  how  we  did  it.  It  seemed  that 
for  a  short  time,  at  least,  we  had  supernatural 
powers.  Indeed,  many  have  attributed,  with 
characteristic  human  lack  of  logic,  this  particu- 
lar access  of  power  to  deity  or  to  divine  aid, 
as  if  implying  that  our  ordinary  everyday 
powers  were  not  the  manifestation  of  divine 
activity. 


20    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

At  such  times,  then,  which  occur  now  and  then 
during  a  life,  we  realise  that  we  are  ourselves 
raised  to  the  wth  power.  The  strength  we  put 
forth  is  primordial,  primal,  archaic.  We  are  in 
perfect  alignment  with  ourselves,  every  fibre  of 
our  physical  being  and  every  thought  of  our  men- 
tal being  seem  to  be  in  perfect  order  and  func- 
tioning in  completely  organised  coordination.  We 
call  upon  the  God  of  Isaac  and  the  God  of  Jacob, 
and  they  are  with  us  and  we  have  the  strength 
of  our  fathers  and  of  our  ancestors  to  the  wth 
generation.  We  all,  too,  know  the  other  extreme, 
when  we  are  doing  our  worst,  when  everything 
goes  wrong,  and  the  right  hand  is  the  enemy  of 
the  left,  and  we  are  at  variance  with  ourselves, 
the  struggle  is  within  and  not  without.  But  I  will 
not  amplify  here. 

Modern  mental  science  has  made  the  dis- 
covery, dimly  foreshadowed  though  it  may  have 
been  for  centuries,  that  the  combined  mental  and 
physical  organism  is  in  a  large  degree  under  the 
control  of  the  Unconscious ;  my  conscious  acts  are 
controlled  by  my  unconscious  life,  your  waking  be- 
haviour by  the  unknown  Titan  slumbering  within 
you,  every  man's  visible  activities  by  the  archaic 
past  which  in  him  still  lives  in  the  present. 

And  it  is  predominantly  archaic  or  primordial 
in  strength  and  in  trend,  and  in  its  universality. 
No  one,  no  matter  how  refined,  cultured,  civilised, 


THE  CEDIPUS  MYTH  21 

escapes  it.  All  children  are  admittedly  primitive 
in  their  nature.  Their  primitive  nature  is  rec- 
ognised in  the  newer  systems  of  education  which 
provide  a  curriculum  running  parallel  with  the 
supposed  outgrowing  of  the  primitive  traits.  It 
is  given  first  the  occupations  and  the  amusements 
of  the  earliest  prehistoric  man,  and  the  steps  of 
advancing  civilisation  are  followed  in  these  sys- 
tems as  if  the  child  rehearsed  in  his  own  life  the 
life  of  the  race,  and  the  savage  was  finally  given 
up  and  replaced  by  the  civilised  man  in  him.  Let 
me  state  here  the  latest  findings  of  the  newer 
psychology  in  this  connection.  The  savage  in  the 
child,  the  archaic  in  man,  still  lives  in  him,  but  in 
that  part  of  him  which  is  called  the  Unconscious. 
It  has  not  been  replaced  or  supplanted,  but  has 
been  overlaid  or  veneered  with  a  partial  civilisa- 
tion in  some  persons,  and  in  a  few  has  been 
secured  for  the  service  of  society  through  a 
process  of  self-control,  and  has  been  almost  trans- 
formed by  a  process  of  sublimation.  In  the 
majority  of  people,  however,  this  veneer  is  only 
skin  deep,  and  in  all  the  actions  of  the  less 
thoughtful  and  more  instinctive,  more  impulsive 
men  and  women  the  archaic  Unconscious  may 
still  be  seen  driving  them  to  their  general  be- 
haviour and  influencing  them  in  their  specific 
actions,  according  as  their  acts  are  more  or  less 
under  the  governance  of  the  usages  of  conven- 


22    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

tional  society  or  are,  as  so  many  of  our  actions 
still  are,  a  matter  of  our  own  private  personal 
life  and  do  not  appear  in  public,  are  not  super- 
vised or  censored,  so  to  speak,  by  public  opinion. 
In  these  private  realms  we  do  as  we  like,  which 
is  as  the  archaic  Titan  within  us  likes,  provided 
only  that  we  do  not  appear  to  do  anything  detri- 
mental to,  or  that  seems  detrimental  to,  our 
neighbours.  It  is  there,  in  this  private  personal 
nature  of  ours,  that  we  have  most  recourse  to  the 
manners  and  customs  of  our  remote  ancestors. 
In  public,  in  the  most  cultured  communities,  our 
behaviour  is  such  as  to  be  of  the  greatest  general 
service  and  widest  validity  for  the  home,  the 
state  and  the  nation.  In  our  private  lives,  which 
a  flattering  self-complacency  is  pleased  to  call  our 
individualities,  we  show  those  peculiarities,  sup- 
posed to  distinguish  us  from  our  neighbours,  but 
which  really  do  not,  because  they  are  the  most 
determined  by  the  archaisms  of  the  Unconscious. 
There  is  a  curious  contradiction  here.  By  all 
that  is  holy  we  respect  individuality  as  if  in  indi- 
viduality or  in  being  different  *  from  our  neigh- 
bour we  possessed  the  only  means  of  preserving 
ourselves  intact  as  individuals.  The  greatest  dif- 
ference, which  by  a  certain  form  of  reasoning 
assures  the  greatest  individuality,  is  to  be  gained 

*The  most  appropriate  place  to  be  absolutely  different  from 
other  people  is  the  insane  asylum. 


THE  CEDIPUS  MYTH  23 

by  doing  that  which  is  farthest  removed  from 
the  conventional  behaviour  of  society.  This  we 
cannot  do  in  the  sight  of  society.  So  we  indulge 
our  greatest  eccentricity  in  private,  having  our 
peculiar  habits  of  the  most  intimate  personal 
nature,  our  pet  superstitions  which  we  keep  to 
ourselves,  our  little  formulae  of  eating,  drinking, 
washing,  dressing,  writing,  reading,  working, 
playing.  These  we  regard  as  the  essential  parts 
of  our  personality,  essential  because  they  differ- 
entiate us,  as  we  think,  from  our  fellows.  But 
they  do  not  separate  us  from  the  rest  of  humanity 
in  that  sense,  for  it  is  just  here,  in  those  regions 
of  our  personality  in  which  we  think  that  we  are 
most  free  to  indulge  our  own  idiosyncrasies,  and 
be  ourselves  and  not  anyone  else,  that  we  draw 
upon  the  universal  humanity  within  us,  the  part 
that  is  common  to  us  all,  the  part  in  which  we 
differ  from  our  neighbours  less  than  in  any  other 
part.  When  apart,  as  it  were,  from  society,  and 
when  freed  for  the  time  from  the  restraints 
imposed  by  our  social  relations,  we  are  most 
under  the  control  of  that  portion  of  our  nature 
which  has  not  yet  been  directed  or  mastered  by 
society  for  the  advancement  of  social  organisa- 
tion. When  we  escape  temporarily  from  the 
supervision  of  our  social  position,  if  our  position 
in  the  social  fabric  may  be  said  to  supervise  us, 
we  tend  to  return  to  the  condition  that  we  were 


24    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

in   before   social   relations   had  begun   to   form 
restrictions  on  our  behaviour. 

That  is  but  saying  that  when  the  human  finds 
himself  in  certain  situations,  he  ceases  to  be  a 
man  and  becomes  a  beast.  Any  panic  demon- 
strates this.  It  also  shows  the  infinite  gradations 
of  this  civilisation  as  appearing  in  different  per- 
sons. In  a  panic  of  almost  any  kind  there  will 
be  those  who  keep  their  heads,  whether  because 
they  have  been  experienced  in  this  particular  kind 
of  emergency,  such  as  firemen  at  a  fire,  or  because 
they  have  in  their  relations  with  their  fellow-men 
absorbed  more  humanity,  more  civilisation,  which 
is  the  ability  to  be  a  citizen  or  to  do  work  in 
cooperation  with  other  people.  Those  in  a  panic 
who  do  not  keep  their  heads  but  act  instinctively, 
who  rush  madly  for  exits,  and  trample  over 
others  weaker  than  they,  or  who  jump  into  life- 
boats, crowding  out  women  and  children,  are  for 
the  time  at  least  dominated  by  their  Unconscious. 
That  in  great  excitement  we  are  unconscious  of 
what,  or  of  a  good  part  of  what,  we  do  needs 
no  proof.  The  unreliability  of  so  much  testimony 
of  witnesses,  even  when  under  oath,  especially 
when  they  are  testifying  about  something  done 
under  great  excitement,  shows  not  only  do  we  not 
fully  know,  at  those  times,  what  we  do,  but  also 
that  we  do  not  know  what  we  see.  Losing  one's 
head,  losing  one's  control  is  like  a  vessel  losing 


THE  GEDIPUS  MYTH  25 

its  rudder  or  its  helmsman,  and  drifting  along 
just  as  the  powers  of  nature  draw  it  and  quite 
irrespective  of  human  direction  or  human  aims, 
human  ideas.  Now,  these  powers  of  nature  in 
the  human  individual  are  the  powers  of  the  Un- 
conscious, that  ninety-nine  per  cent,  of  our  psyche 
over  which  the  most  of  us  have  secured  no  con- 
trol, and  it  is  they  who,  when  they  are  undirected, 
do  so  much  damage  to  our  entire  personality, 
both  the  unconscious  part  of  it  and  the  conscious 
part. 

From  these  considerations  the  primordial,  the 
archaic  character  of  the  Unconscious  clearly 
emerges.  The  facts  I  have  stated  in  the  briefest 
possible  form  because  they  are  so  well  known. 
But  the  application  of  them  made  by  the  newer 
psychology  is  the  least  evident  to  most  persons 
and  will  require  the  most  detailed  treatment. 

We  may  state,  as  a  preliminary,  that  every  act 
of  every  man,  woman  and  child  is  either  social 
or  asocial,  that  whatever  we  do  we  are  either 
revealing  through  some  trivial  act  the  primordial 
power  that  resides  within  us,  or  we  are  doing 
something  positively  constructive  or  destructive  of 
the  community  in  which  we  live;  that  is,  none  of 
our  acts  is  without  its  effect,  on  ourselves  and  on 
our  neighbours.  If  we  are  merely  revealing  or 
giving  evidence  of,  or  manifesting  to  those  who 
have  the  eyes  to  see,  the  fundamental  powers  that 


26    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

are  ours  (if  we  but  learn  to  control  them),  we 
are  doing  a  constructive  work  just  in  so  far  as 
the  powers  are  perceived  by  other  persons.  We 
are,  in  that  respect,  dependent  for  our  results 
upon  the  persons  who  know  more  than  we  do. 
Some  see  the  enormous  power  of  the  human 
individual  and  they  are  stimulated  by  the  sight, 
but  it  is  only  because  they  have  been  taught  to 
see  its  manifestations  in  all  the  behaviour  of  their 
fellows.  Now,  the  social  acts  are  the  acts  that 
are  determined  by  the  directed  thinking,  and  the 
asocial  acts  are  those  determined  or  caused  or 
controlled  by  the  undirected  thinking,  which  is 
the  Unconscious. 

But  the  social  acts  are  a  matter  of  evolution. 
What  has  been  social  for  the  last  century  was  not 
social  for  the  century  before  that,  or  as  in  the 
study  of  things  human  we  are  dealing  with  vast 
periods  of  time,  we  may  have  to  say  that  what 
was  of  service  to  society  a  thousand  years  ago 
is  not  serviceable  to  society  today.  What  was 
constructive  a  thousand  years  ago  is  constructive 
no  longer  but  destructive  of  the  social  organism. 
For  example,  marriage  did  not  exist  in  those 
archaic  times.  Sexual  promiscuity  was  the  rule. 
It  could  not  have  even  been  known  what  were 
the  exact  relations  of  persons  within  a  tribe  to 
one  another.  Fathers  mating  with  their  own 
daughters,  mothers  with  their  own  sons,  brothers 


THE  CEDIPUS  MYTH  27 

with  sisters,  were  as  inevitable  as  the  analogous 
relations  among  barnyard  fowls.  But  some  mys- 
terious force  is  always  at  work  among  even  the 
lowest  type  of  tribal  development,  which  tells  the 
uncivilised  that  the  mating  of  too  close  blood  rela- 
tions is  disadvantageous  from  a  purely  physical 
point  of  view,  and  a  taboo  arises,  none  of  them 
knows  how  or  why,  during  the  course  of  the  cen- 
turies, as  they  progress  in  the  arts  and  learn  to 
go  abroad  and  meet  and  observe  their  neighbour- 
ing tribes;  and  the  too  close  relationship  in  mat- 
ing is  called  by  a  name  that  is  invented  to  express 
the  conclusion  thus  reached  by  the  tribe,  that  the 
promiscuity  of  sexual  relations  as  affecting  cer- 
tain blood  relatives  is  undesirable,  unsuitable, 
damaged,  spotted.  Now  the  word  in  one  ancient 
language  for  this  idea  of  polluted  is  INCESTUS. 
It  was  properly  applied  to  a  great  many  situa- 
tions in  human  life  that  might  be  described  by 
the  words  "  unclean,  defiled,  sinful,  criminal." 
In  the  evolution  of  marriage,  however,  it  has 
been  restricted  in  its  meaning,  and  specialised  so 
that  it  now  stands  for  a  definite  relation  between 
relatives  that  the  law,  political  or  spiritual, 
considers  too  close.  The  father-daughter  and 
mother-son  mating  and  the  brother-sister  mating 
seem  to  have  been  the  ones  earliest  taken  excep- 
tion to,  and  the  other  degrees  of  nearness  of  blood 
relationship  come  in  for  restrictions  in  different 


28     MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

countries  at  different  times,  and  even  at  the  same 
time,  as  is  evident  from  the  convention  obtain- 
ing so  long  in  the  British  Isles  that  prevented  a 
man  from  legally  marrying  his  deceased  wife's 
sister. 

Now,  the  mating  of  father  and  daughter  or 
the  mating  of  mother  and  son  has  for  a  couple 
of  thousand  years  at  least  been  a  matter  for  so 
great  horror  that  an  early  Greek  myth  deals  with 
the  terrible  fate  that  came  to  the  man  who  even 
without  knowing  it  married  his  mother.  I  refer 
to  the  story  of  GEdipus.  For  the  purpose  of 
refreshing  the  reader's  memory  and  for  present- 
ing the  myth  in  only  its  essential  form,  which  will 
exclude  irrelevant  details,  I  will  reproduce  it 
here,  as  follows : 

"  After  passing  through  the  hands  of  the  dram- 
atists the  story  assumed  the  following  form: 

"  Laius,  son  of  Labdacus,  King  of  Thebes,  was 
warned  by  Apollo's  oracle  at  Delphi  that  he  was 
to  die  at  the  hands  of  his  son.  In  spite  of  this 
warning  Laius  became  by  his  wife  Jocasta  the 
father  of  a  boy.  When  the  child  was  born  he 
fastened  its  ankles  with  a  pin  (whence  the  name 
4  swell  foot ')  and  gave  it  to  a  faithful  herdsman 
to  expose  on  Mount  Cithaeron.  Ignorant  of  the 
oracle,  the  man  in  pity  gave  the  child  to  the  shep- 
herd of  Polybus,  King  of  Corinth,  and  that  ruler, 


THE  CEDIPUS  MYTH  29 

who  was  childless,  reared  him  as  his  own  son. 
The  young  man,  OEdipus,  never  doubted  his 
Corinthian  origin  till  the  taunt  of  a  drunken  com- 
panion roused  his  suspicions,  and,  unable  to  ob- 
tain satisfaction  from  his  supposed  parents,  he 
sought  the  oracle  at  Delphi,  which  did  not 
answer  his  question,  but  warned  him  that  he  was 
doomed  to  slay  his  father  and  wed  his  mother. 
Horrified,  CEdipus  fled  from  Corinth,  and 
shortly  after,  at  a  narrow  place  in  the  road,  met 
Laius  with  his  servants.  They  endeavoured  to 
force  him  from  the  road,  and  in  the  quarrel  he 
slew  them  all,  as  he  supposed.  Pursuing  his 
journey,  he  found  Thebes  harassed  by  the  Sphinx, 
who  propounded  a  riddle  to  every  passer-by  and 
devoured  all  who  failed  to  solve  it.  Creon,  the 
brother  of  Jocasta,  who  had  become  king  on  the 
death  of  Laius,  had  offered  the  hand  of  his  sister 
and  the  kingdom  to  him  who,  by  solving  the  rid- 
dle, should  free  the  city  from  the  monster. 
CEdipus  answered  the  riddle  and  thus  slew  the 
Sphinx.  He  then  married  Jocasta,  his  mother, 
and  became  king  of  Thebes.  At  first  he  pros- 
pered greatly  and  four  children  were  born  to  him, 
two  sons,  Eteocles  and  Polynices,  and  two  daugh- 
ters, Antigone  and  Ismene.  At  length  a  terrible 
pestilence  visited  Thebes,  and  the  oracle  declared 
that  the  murderer  of  Laius  must  be  expelled  from 
the  country.  QEdipus  began  the  search,  and 


30     MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

by  degrees  the  truth  became  known.  Jocasta 
hanged  herself  and  QEdipus  put  out  his  eyes." — 
International  Encyclopedia. 

The  pity  and  terror  which  Aristotle  says  purge 
our  souls  as  we  see  on  the  stage  the  representa- 
tion of  the  myth,  is  caused,  according  to  Freud, 
by  the  fact  that  in  our  Unconscious  we  feel  that 
except  for  fate  we  might  have  suffered  the  same 
miseries  as  CEdipus,  because  every  man  has  in  his 
Unconscious  a  craving  that  has  not  been  modern- 
ised, a  craving  that  does  not  make  even  so  fine 
a  distinction  between  women,  as  that,  for  instance, 
between  his  mother  and  a  woman  his  own  age 
or  younger. 

The  CEdipus  myth  has  been  used  in  psycho- 
analysis as  a  measure  by  which  to  test  the  rela- 
tive development  of  the  individual  psyche.  By 
means  of  the  interpretation  of  a  given  person's 
dreams  it  is  possible  to  tell  how  far  his  Uncon- 
scious has  progressed  along  the  line  of  evolution 
from  the  place  where  it  desires  the  possession  of 
the  mother  above  all  else  in  the  world.  It  is 
shown  by  this  method  that  the  psyche  of  a  great 
many  persons  afflicted  with  certain  sorts  of  nerv- 
ous disorders  has  been  subject  to  a  fixation  (as  it 
is  called)  upon  the  mother.  This  applies,  in 
strict  literalness,  of  course  only  to  men.  But  the 
corresponding  unconscious  mental  state  occurring 


THE  CEDIPUS  MYTH  31 

in  women  is  quite  as  common  if  not  commoner, 
and  is  sometimes  known  by  the  name  of  the 
Electra  complex.  A  complex,  as  will  be  seen 
later,  is  a  group  of  unconscious  ideas,  or  rather 
a  group  of  ideas  in  the  Unconscious,  which,  hav- 
ing been  subjected  to  repression,  continues  to 
have  an  independent  existence  and  growth.  The 
Electra  complex  is  for  women  quite  analogous 
to  the  CEdipus  complex  in  men,  so  much  so,  in 
fact,  that  the  name  QEdipus  complex  is  indiffer- 
ently used  for  both,  the  relations  to  be  changed 
being  understood.  Thus,  as  the  primary  affec- 
tion on  the  part  of  the  boy  is  for  his  mother 
and  his  earliest  wish  is  to  supplant  the  father  in 
the  affection  of  his  mother,  so  the  primary  affec- 
tion of  the  little  girl  is  for  her  father  and  she 
wishes  above  all  things  to  supplant  her  mother 
in  the  regard  of  her  father.  These  natural 
expressions  of  preference  on  the  part  of  little 
boys  and  girls  are  quite  familiar  to  all  observant 
persons.  The  natural  fondness  for  the  parent  of 
the  other  sex  is  even  encouraged  by  some  fathers 
and  mothers.  But  we  are  in  the  study  of  the 
Unconscious  not  so  much  concerned  with  these 
conscious  expressions  of  preference.  The  CEdipus 
myth,  when  used  as  a  measure  of  the  state  of 
development  of  the  psyche,  refers  only  to  the 
conditions  of  the  Unconscious  itself  which  are 
only  faintly  indicated  in  the  conscious  life,  condi- 


32     MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

tions  which  are  impossible  to  test  accurately  with- 
out the  instrument  of  precision  supplied  us  by  the 
dreams  of  the  individual  in  question.  So  that 
when  it  is  said  that  such  and  such  a  person  shows 
an  unconscious  fixation  of  the  CEdipus  type,  it 
does  not  mean  that  we  have  a  right  to  be  horri- 
fied as  we  should  be  at  hearing  that  the  child 
has  an  incest-wish,  as  it  has  been  termed,  for  the 
parent  of  the  opposite  sex,  but  merely  that  there 
exists,  in  the  Unconscious  of  the  individual  in 
question,  a  condition  which  corresponds  to  the 
archaic  social  conditions  before  society  had 
stamped  the  mating  of  son  and  mother  or  father 
and  daughter  as  incest.  It  should  here  be  stated, 
however,  that  this  CEdipus  complex,  while,  as 
above  remarked,  it  is  only  dimly  indicated  in  the 
conscious  life,  has,  nevertheless,  far-reaching 
effects  upon  the  behaviour  and  activities  of  the 
individual. 

The  bearing  of  this  fact  upon  the  life  of  the 
individual  man  of  today  is  most  important.  It 
is  to  be  taken,  however,  in  connection  with 
another  fact,  namely,  that  the  Unconscious,  being 
so  archaic,  and  so  artless  and  so  infantile,  has 
the  childlike  characteristic  of  appearing  in  the 
infancy  of  the  individual.  Very  young  children, 
even  infants,  show  this  craving  for  the  attention 
of  the  opposite  sex.  It  is  a  necessity  to  the  very 
existence  of  the  infant  to  be  extremely  fond  of 


33 

one  woman.  The  forming  of  a  strong  attach- 
ment for  the  mother  or  the  person  who,  in  the 
absence  of  the  mother,  performs  her  duties  is 
paralleled  in  a  great  many  men  by  a  fondness 
for  the  home  where,  after  their  own  marriage, 
they  get  a  revival  of  the  services  which  their 
mothers  used  to  render  them.  In  the  quiet  and 
peace  of  the  home  the  husband  once  more 
returns  mentally  to  the  situation  where  he  is  the 
recipient  of  nourishment  and  comfort  from  the 
same  woman  who  has  been  the  maker  of  his  own 
body.  It  is  no  wonder  if  there  is  some  rivalry 
between  wife  and  mother-in-law,  or  between 
wife  and  mother,  even  though  the  mother  is  not 
physically  present.  The  mother  of  the  man 
stands  in  the  same  relation  to  the  wife  that  a 
former  wife  would.  In  other  words,  it  is  never 
possible  for  a  man  to  say  to  the  woman  he  first 
wants  to  marry  that  he  has  never  loved  any  other 
woman.  Of  course  he  can  say  it,  but  it  will  not 
be  true.  He  has  loved,  and  with  an  ardour  that 
only  a  purely  unrestrained  infantile  craving  can 
create,  a  woman  that  must  always  be  the  rival  of 
the  wife  unless  this  relation  which  we  are  now 
discussing  has  been  satisfactorily  settled  either  in 
or  out  of  consciousness.  If  it  is  possible  for  a 
woman  to  be  happy  as  the  second  wife  of  a  man, 
it  must  be  for  the  same  reason  as  for  a  woman 
to  be  happy  as  the  first  wife  of  a  man — that  is, 


34    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

so  far  as  it  depends  on  the  actions  of  the  man. 
Because  it  will  now  be  evident  to  the  reader  that 
there  is  a  certain  line  of  conduct  conceivable  in 
a  husband  that  is  more  appropriate  toward  a 
mother  than  toward  a  wife,  just  as  there  is 
an  appropriate  motherly  attitude  in  a  mother 
toward  her  children  which  is  singularly  in- 
appropriate in  a  wife  toward  her  husband.  In 
other  words,  no  matter  what  the  moralisers  in 
the  evening  papers  say  about  the  wisdom  of  the 
wife  "  mothering  "  her  husband,  it  is  a  kind  of 
action  that  is  likely  to  cause  the  greatest  unhap- 
piness  for  the  reason  that  if  a  man  wants  a  wife 
in  the  most  modern  sense  and  according  to  the 
most  modern  ideals,  he  wants  her  not  merely  as 
his  cook  and  the  mother  and  nurse  of  his  chil- 
dren, not  merely  as  his  housekeeper,  not  merely 
as  an  auxiliary  tailor  with  the  special  duties  of 
sewing  on  buttons  and  mending  holes,  not  merely 
as  the  performer  of  a  vast  number  of  duties 
almost  anyone  would  be  unable  to  recount,  but  as 
a  spiritual  and  intellectual  comrade  of  a  kind 
different  from  the  male  companions  he  has  in 
business  and  in  the  other  relations  of  life.  And 
no  matter  how  much  a  man  may  respect  and 
desire  his  mother,  and  all  the  comforts  of  home 
with  which  she  supplied  him,  it  is  folly  of  the 
most  arrant  kind  for  a  husband  to  look  to  his 
wife  for  things  that  are  peculiarly  maternal, 


THE  CEDIPUS  MYTH  35 

unless  he  wishes  to  place  himself  on  the  same 
level  with  his  own  children.  Many  men  do. 
There  are  not  a  few  who  call  their  wives 
"  Mother,"  or  even  "  Mama."  Possibly  they 
think  they  do  it  solely  to  amuse  or  set  an  example 
to  their  children.  We  know,  on  the  other  hand, 
that  the  unconscious  cause  of  this  word's  being 
used  is  that  the  psyche,  just  as  water  falls  to  its 
own  level,  tends  to  return  to  the  situations  of  its 
least  activity — that  is,  to  the  state  just  after  or 
even  before  it  was  born,  and  is  always  pulling 
all  of  us,  who  do  not  overcome  this  tendency,  in 
the  direction  of  peace,  of  home,  of  mother,  of 
rest,  of  inactivity,  of  Nirvana.  Anything  what- 
ever that  suggests  or  is  mentally  associated  with 
this  tendency  is  seized  upon  by  the  Unconscious 
with  unerring  inevitability.  This  trait  and  a  thou- 
sand others  proclaim,  to  those  who  can  under- 
stand the  language,  the  attitude  of  the  man  not 
only  in  his  business  but  in  his  home,  and  in  his 
most  intimate  relations  with  his  family  and  with 
himself. 

In  short,  every  man  has  been  and  is  by  nature 
passionately  in  love  with  his  mother,  a  love  which 
is  a  consuming  love  and  which  because  of  its 
ecstatic  quality  is  to  colour  for  him  his  appercep- 
tion of  every  woman  whom  he  sees  subsequently, 
and  in  particular  the  woman  whom  he  chooses 
for  his  life  mate.  As  his  mother  was  his  first 


36    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

mate,  he  cannot  look  upon  and  judge  a  single 
other  woman  save  by  reference  to  and  in  com- 
parison with  the  woman  who  has  been  his  ideal 
from  the  time  he  was  able  to  distinguish  one  per- 
son from  another.  Every  look,  expression,  tone 
of  voice,  touch  and  even  odour  (unconsciously, 
to  be  sure)  is  perceived  by  him  through  the 
medium  of  his  memories  of  his  mother  or  her 
surrogate  (the  nearest  female  person  to  him  in 
his  childhood,  if  by  any  chance  his  mother  did 
not  happen  to  be  such). 

The  greatest  mystery  in  the  world  to  some  of 
us  is  what  constitutes  the  attraction  some  people 
have  for  others.  How  this  man  of  our  acquaint- 
ance could  ever  have  fallen  in  love  with  the 
woman  he  did  passes  our  understanding.  Some 
of  us,  too,  have  sometimes  wondered  how  we 
ever  could  have  been  so  fascinated  by  our  own 
spouses,  whether  we  be  men  or  women,  as  to 
think  that  we  should  never  tire  of  them.  The 
folly  of  this  or  that  attachment  among  our 
acquaintance  is  so  clearly  manifest  to  us,  not 
merely  the  young  lovers  in  the  ardour  of  youth, 
whom  we  naturally  expect  to  be  hasty  in  their 
judgment,  but  even  those  whose  passions  have 
cooled  off.  But  when  looked  at  from  the  point 
of  view  that  our  knowledge  of  the  Unconscious 
gives  us,  the  causes  of  the  preference  are  quite 
transparent.  The  psychoanalyst  is  able,  through 


THE  CEDIPUS  MYTH  37 

interpretation  of  dreams  and  of  other  manifesta- 
tions of  the  Unconscious,  to  discover  just  what 
is  the  trouble  in  the  most  intimate  of  human  rela- 
tions and  to  direct  a  course  of  action  which  will 
ameliorate  or  cure  these  troubles,  some  of  which 
are  attended  not  merely  with  mental  but  many 
with  serious  physical  ills. 


CHAPTER  IV 

THE   FORE-CONSCIOUS 

No  attempt  is  made  by  the  newer  psychology  to 
give  an  exact  definition  of  the  Unconscious.  But 
as  in  the  case  of  many  terms  which  are  hard  if 
not  impossible  to  define,  an  approximation  is 
made  by  specifying  what  these  terms  do  not 
include.  Now,  in  studying  mental  operations  it 
is  seen  that  there  is  a  mass  of  mental  material 
that,  while  not  in  consciousness  at  the  time,  may 
at  will  be  summoned  to  appear  before  conscious- 
ness; in  other  words,  there  are  facts,  memories, 
mental  images  which  we  can  recall  whenever  we 
desire  to  do  so,  and  there  are  other  facts,  proper 
names  being  an  excellent  example,  which,  although 
they  may  not  in  every  case  be  recalled  when  we 
want  them,  and  even  evince  a  perversity  in 
sometimes  not  coming  when  they  are  called,  occur 
spontaneously  as  it  appears,  and  at  times  when 
we  may  be  thinking  of  something  very  remote 
from  any  logical  connection  with  them.  I  say 
advisedly  very  remote,  for  the  reason  that  it  will 
appear  later  that  these  ideas  which  seem  to  enter 
of  their  own  accord  are  quite  as  closely  connected 

38 


THE  FORE-CONSCIOUS  39 

with  the  topics  which  are  occupying  our  attention 
at  the  time  as  the  others.  The  connection  is  not 
so  much  logical  as  it  is  psychological. 

Another  illustration  of  the  type  of  mental 
material  which  may  be  called  up  at  will  is  the 
multiplication  table.  Others  are  the  telephone 
numbers  or  addresses  of  more  or  less  numerous 
friends  or  the  brands  and  prices  of  several  com- 
modities. We  have  them  in  mind — that  is,  in  con- 
sciousness— whenever  we  want  them  and  almost 
without  fail,  and  dismiss  them,  and  call  up  others. 
Of  course  there  are  times  when,  on  account  of 
our  being  disconcerted,  we  may  not  be  able  to 
remember  these  factst  at  exactly  the  minute  we 
desire  to  use  them.  But  things  like  these  are  in 
and  out  of  the  mind  day  after  day,  with  quite 
a  reasonable  degree  of  certainty,  in  much  the 
same  way  as  we  can  call  up  any  one  of  a  million 
or  so  of  people  on  the  telephone. 

Now,  the  name  applied  to  those  ideas,  facts, 
images  and  other  mental  states  which  we  have 
the  power  to  call  up  at  will,  or  that  part  of  the 
mind  where  they  are  stored,  is  the  Fore-conscious. 
It  contains  those  thoughts  and  ideas  which  are 
available  for  ready  reproduction,  and  which 
occupy  our  minds  most  clearly  when  we  are  not 
actively  looking,  hearing,  tasting,  touching,  etc. 
These  ideas  of  the  fore-conscious  are  the  only 
purely  mental  material,  aside  from  real  sensa- 


40    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

tions  and  perceptions,  available  for  the  most  of 
us  when  we  wish  to  do  any  voluntary  thinking. 

The  Unconscious,  on  the  other  hand,  is  that 
region  of  the  mind  where  are  deposited,  and 
have  been  deposited  since  our  birth  (and  some 
students  of  the  mind  think  even  before),  all  our 
experiences,  not  only  those  of  last  summer,  for 
instance,  every  sight  or  sound  that  we  perceived 
and  every  feeling  that  we  had,  but  everything 
that  has  ever  happened  to  us.  Think  of  all  the 
places  our  parents  took  us  to  before  the  time  of 
the  earliest  memory  we  can  rake  up  out  of  our 
earliest  childhood!  We  cannot  possibly  recall 
them  all,  although  they  occurred  at  the  most 
impressionable  age,  before  we  were  five  years  old. 
There  has  been  a  gradual  process  of  forgetting 
taking  place,  which  in  our  present  terminology 
we  may  describe  by  saying  that  these  experiences 
have  for  a  short  time  been  in  the  fore-conscious, 
but  have  one  by  one  dropped  out  of  it.  To  con- 
tinue the  telephone  metaphor,  we  may  say  that 
connection  has  been  cut  off  from  those  incidents, 
which  are  now  comparable  to  the  billions  of 
humans  who  live  their  entire  lives  out  of  reach 
of  any  telephone  lines  whatever.  They  could 
be  reached  only  by  putting  up  poles  and  wires  or 
by  other  expensive  construction. 

For  these  ideas  of  the  forerconscious  we  need 
no  inferential  proof.  By  means  of  them  we 


THE  FORE-CONSCIOUS  41 

revive  into  conscious  and  experience  again,  in  our 
own  personalities,  things  that  have  occurred 
days,  weeks,  months,  years  ago.  I  have  said 
that  we  can  recall  them  at  will,  and  also  that  they 
return  spontaneously.  Some  are  aroused  in  one 
of  these  ways,  and  some  in  the  other.  At  any 
rate,  that  is  the  general  opinion.  How  accurate 
this  general  opinion  is  may  be  inferred  later 
when  we  come  to  discuss  the  origin  of  particular 
thoughts.  But  no  one  will  deny  that  the  ideas 
of  the  fore-conscious  are  what  has  been  called 
immediate  experience.  In  this  respect  they  are 
as  certain  facts  as  are  all  our  sensations  and  per- 
ceptions, of  which  indeed  they  have  been  called 
the  copies. 

Kaplan  *  says :  "  We  are  forced  to  recognise 
the  Unconscious,  *  if  we  let  conscious  psychic 
phenomena  pass  not  merely  as  an  empty  succes- 
sion of  experiences,  but  wish  to  bring  them  into 
intimate  relations  in  the  same  way  that  we  con- 
nect the  hourly  increasing  strokes  of  the  hour  on 
the  clock  intimately  through  the  knowledge  that 
they  are  the  regular  effects  of  a  mechanism  built 
and  operating  according  to  certain  laws  and  at 
most  only  withdrawn  from  our  perception.'  We 
divide  unconscious  mental  processes  into  two 
classes,  those  that  are  '  forgotten '  on  account  of 
their  being  *  uninteresting,'  and  those  that  are 

*  Grundziige  der  Psychoanalyse,  p.  8x. 


42    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

*  repressed '  on  account  of  their  '  painful '  or 
even  *  shocking '  nature.  The  psychic  processes 
of  the  first  class,  containing  all  as  yet  unsettled 
thoughts  or  those  not  yet  brought  to  a  conclu- 
sion, are  really  '  unconscious,'  but  they  may  easily 
become  '  conscious,'  they  are  '  available  for  con- 
sciousness.' Those  of  the  second  class  are  in  the 
highest  degree  unconscious,  they  may  be  called 
'  unavailable  for  consciousness.'  For  this  reason 
Freud  divides  the  unconscious  into  the  '  fore- 
conscious  '  and  the  absolutely  '  unconscious.'  The 
concept  '  unavailable  for  consciousness '  is  evi- 
dently a  relative  one,  and  denotes  only  the  man- 
ner in  which  anything  is  experienced;  the  task  of 
psychoanalysis,  however,  is  to  bring  to  conscious- 
ness the  processes  that  are  unavailable  for  con- 
sciousness. 

"  The  unconscious  is  not  to  be  compared  with 
the  unreal  or  non-existent.  From  the  above  dis- 
cussion it  is  easy  to  understand  this  about  the 
'  fore-conscious,'  that  is,  the  act  of  forgetting  in 
the  ordinary  sense,  and  about  the  thoughts  not 
carried  to  a  conclusion.  The  same  is  true  of  the 
'  unconscious '  in  the  special  sense  of  Freud. 
There  are  conditions  where  the  complexes  un- 
available for  consciousness  press  forward  into 
consciousness,  but  their  belonging  to  the  ego  is 
disguised." 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   UNCONSCIOUS.       (DESCRIPTIVE) 

ON  the  other  hand,  the  thoughts,  ideas  and 
wishes  of  the  Unconscious  are  never  directly 
called  up  voluntarily.  They  are  neither  subject 
to  our  volition  nor  do  they  make  their  appear- 
ance spontaneously.  They  are  and  remain  for- 
ever inaccessible  to  ordinary  consciousness.  Their 
existence  even  is  a  matter  of  inference.  They 
are  described  as  being  that  portion  of  our  mental 
states  of  which  we  may  not  have  direct  or  im- 
mediate experience,  but  whose  existence  we  may 
deduce  from  other  facts.  From  certain  mental 
diseases,  from  dreams,  from  mistakes  in  reading, 
speaking  and  writing,  and  from  actions  of  the 
type  which  is  called  "  symptomatic,"  we  infer  the 
existence  of  certain  unconscious  ideas  and  wishes, 
which  we  never  directly  experience  as  such,  but 
whose  effects  upon  our  behaviour  and  even  our 
specific  acts  are  clearly  demonstrable.  Just  as 
the  astronomers  in  the  days  of  low-powered 
telescopes  deduced  the  existence  of  the  planet 
Neptune  from  the  motions  of  the  other  planets, 
motions  which  could  be  accounted  for  on  no 

43 


44    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

other  basis  save  the  existence  of  a  planet  which 
they  could  not  see,  but  which  later  astronomers 
have  seen  with  telescopes  of  higher  power,  so 
psychoanalysis,  relying  only  on  the  low-powered 
instrument  of  conscious  thought,  deduces  the 
existence  of  certain  features  of  the  uncon- 
scious part  of  the  psyche,  features  which  are 
well  known  to  it  by  their  effects  upon  conscious 
thoughts  and  acts,  but  of  which  consciousness 
itself  can  have  no  direct  and  immediate  experi- 
ence. 

And  just  as  astronomy  with  its  telescopes,  and 
with  its  spectroscopes,  has  been  able  to  give  us 
exact  information  about  a  goodly  proportion  of 
the  illimitable  universe  invisible  to  the  naked 
eye,  information  the  reliability  of  which  no  one 
doubts,  so  psychoanalysis,  with  instruments  of 
precision,  albeit  purely  mental  and  not  material 
ones,  has  already,  in  the  brief  quarter  of  a  cen- 
tury of  its  work  as  a  science,  given  us  informa- 
tion of  the  most  stupendous  and  yet  perfectly 
practical  character  about  a  portion  of  our  souls 
of  which  we  had  before  been  in  complete  igno- 
rance, a  vast  illimitable  realm  which  in  extent  may 
well  be  compared  to  the  stellar  universe  in  pro- 
portion to  the  circumscribed  confines  of  our  con- 
scious life.  And  the  simile  may  be  carried  out 
in  another  direction,  too.  Just  as  we  are  im- 
pressed with  a  feeling  of  awe,  as  we  look  into 


COMPLETE  RETENTIVENESS      45 

the  depths  of  the  heavens  on  a  moonless,  starry 
night,  so  do  we  experience  a  feeling  of  awe,  and 
a  sensation  of  being  confronted  with  something 
of  enormousness  and  immeasurable  import  when 
through  the  study  of  the  newer  psychology  we 
face  the  infinite  deeps  of  the  human  soul. 

A.    Complete  Retentiveness 

In  much  the  same  way  as  on  a  starry  night 
our  vision  is  filled  with  the  countless  numbers  of 
the  stars,  and  we  think  that,  if  our  sight  was  keen 
enough,  we  should  be  able  to  see  still  others,  and 
that  possibly  if  keen-sighted  enough  we  should 
see  no  black  sky,  nothing  but  stars,  so  we  are 
impressed  with  the  fact  that  the  Unconscious  is 
absolutely  retentive  of  every  experience  that  the 
individual  has  ever  had. 

After  study  of  the  Unconscious  in  its  various 
manifestations  in  everyday  life  and  in  dreams, 
we  find  that  it  is  an  ever  retentive  storehouse,  in 
which  is  preserved  everything  that  has  entered 
the  mind  through  all  the  avenues  of  sensation, 
both  external  and  internal,  that  most  of  what  we 
experienced  has  been  forgotten,  but,  though  for- 
gotten, is  still  operative  in  our  minds,  ever  striv- 
ing to  return  to  consciousness.  We  find  that 
there  is  a  restraining  force  which  prevents  most 
of  our  thoughts  and  feelings  from  reentering 


46    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

consciousness  in  their  own  true  form,  but  that  if 
sufficiently  disguised  they  may  elude  that  restrain- 
ing force,  the  censor,*  and  appear  in  other  forms. 
We  discover  that  the  enormous  vital  power  of 
the  psyche,  so  large  a  proportion  of  which  is 
unknown  to  us,  is  capable  of  an  extraordinary 
degree  of  development  which  has  been  called  its 
sublimation,!  and  that  failing  to  find  that  sublima- 
tion in  activities  connected  with  life  outside  of 
us,  the  life  craving  turns  inward  toward  the 
physiological  processes  of  nutrition,  reproduction, 
etc.,  and  becomes  the  cause  of  the  disordered 
functioning  of  the  bodily  mechanism.  We  are 
convinced  of  the  fact  that  the  constant  vital  crav- 
ing is  manifested,  too,  in  every  act  of  our  daily 
lives.  These  considerations  will  occupy  us  in  the 
pages  immediately  following. 

No  matter  how  trivial,  every  sensation  and 
every  perception  of  the  individual  psyche  is  stored 
in  its  original  shape  in  the  Unconscious.  The 
appearance  of  everything  we  ever  saw,  the  sound 
of  everything  we  ever  heard,  the  feeling  of  every- 
thing we  ever  touched,  all  these  are  registered, 
some  say  in  the  billion  or  so  cells  in  the  brain, 
like  negatives  on  a  photographic  film.  They 
almost  always  remain  undeveloped,  preserving 
their  unconscious  state  forever.  But  they  are 
sometimes  developed  "  as  the  photographer's 

*  See  page  71.  t  See  page  80. 


COMPLETE  RETENTIVENESS      47 

fluid  develops  the  picture  sleeping  in  the  collodion 
film.  The  oftenest  quoted  of  these  cases  is 
Coleridge's : 

"  '  In  a  Roman  Catholic  town  in  Germany,  a 
young  woman,  who  could  neither  read  nor  write, 
was  seized  with  a  fever,  and  was  said  by  the 
priests  to  be  possessed  of  a  devil,  because  she  was 
heard  talking  Latin,  Greek  and  Hebrew.  Whole 
sheets  of  her  ravings  were  written  out,  and  found 
to  consist  of  sentences  intelligible  in  themselves, 
but  having  slight  connection  with  each  other.  Of 
her  Hebrew  sayings  only  a  few  could  be  traced 
to  the  Bible,  and  most  seemed  to  be  in  the 
Rabbinical  dialect.  All  trick  was  out  of  the  ques- 
tion ;  the  woman  was  a  simple  creature ;  there  was 
no  doubt  as  to  the  fever  ...  At  last  the  mys- 
tery was  unveiled  by  a  physician,  who  determined 
to  trace  back  the  girl's  history,  and  who,  after 
much  trouble,  discovered  that  at  the  age  of  nine 
she  had  been  charitably  taken  by  an  old  Protes- 
tant pastor,  a  great  Hebrew  scholar,  in  whose 
house  she  lived  till  his  death.  On  further 
inquiry  it  appeared  to  have  been  the  old  man's 
custom  for  years  to  walk  up  and  down  a  passage 
of  his  house  into  which  the  kitchen  opened,  and 
to  read  to  himself  with  a  loud  voice  out  of  his 
books.  The  books  were  ransacked,  and  among 
them  were  found  several  of  the  Greek  and  Latin 
Fathers,  together  with  a  collection  of  Rabbinical 


48     MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

writings.  In  these  works  so  many  of  the  passages 
taken  down  at  the  young  woman's  bedside  were 
identified  that  there  could  be  no  reasonable 
doubt  as  to  their  source '  '  (James:  Psychology, 
I,  681). 

Sporadic  cases  like  this  show  clearly  the  pos- 
sibility of  utter  completeness  of  retention  by  the 
mind  of  almost  every  incident,  no  matter  how 
apparently  trivial  and  unimportant  to  the  person 
retaining  the  memory.  The  fact  that  needs  ex- 
planation, supposing  that  we  are  all  equally  reten- 
tive, is  how  it  happens  that  some  of  our  memories 
are  selected  for  recall  while  others  are  by  some 
influence  rendered  incapable  of  recall.  Freud 
and  his  school  have  contributed  an  original 
answer  to  this  question,  an  answer  that  will  be 
indicated  in  the  following  pages. 

What  strikes  the  thoughtful  person  at  the 
outset  of  his  study  of  the  newer  psychology  is 
the  recurrence  of  the  phrases  "  unconscious 
thoughts,"  "  unconscious  wishes "  and  similar 
expressions.  If  he  happens  to  be  acquainted 
with  the  general  position  of  philosophy  up  to  the 
advent  of  the  science  of  psychoanalysis,  he  will 
at  once  inquire  how  it  is  possible  that  there  should 
be  unconscious  mental  states  of  any  sort.  The 
definition  of  mind  generally  accepted  up  to  the 
time  of  analytic  psychology  has  made  mind  coex- 
tensive with  consciousness.  So  that  the  term  un- 


COMPLETE  RETENTIVENESS      49 

conscious  mental  process  will  seem  to  him  a 
contradiction.  But  the  psychoanalysts  have  amply 
demonstrated  that  unconscious  thinking  not  only 
takes  place,  but  that  it  goes  on  all  the  time, 
whether  we  are  awake  or  asleep. 

Freud  (Traumdeutung,  p.  450)  says:  "  It  is  a 
striking  peculiarity  of  unconscious  processes  that 
they  remain  indestructible.  In  the  Unconscious 
there  is  no  ending,  there  is  no  past,  there  is  no 
forgetting.  We  are  most  strongly  impressed  with 
this  when  investigating  the  neuroses,  especially 
hysteria.  The  insult  that  occurred  thirty  years 
ago,  once  it  has  won  its  way  to  the  unconscious 
sources  of  the  affects,  works  the  entire  thirty 
years  like  a  new  one.  As  often  as  its  memory  is 
touched  it  revives  and  is  shown  to  be  possessed 
of  an  excitability  which  at  one  stroke  produces 
motor  disturbance.  Exactly  here  is  where  psy- 
chotherapy comes  in.  It  is  its  task  to  produce  for 
the  unconscious  processes  a  discharge  and  a 
forgetting.  Therefore  what  we  are  inclined  to 
consider  self-explanatory  and  account  for  as  a  pri- 
mary influence  of  time  upon  the  mental  memory 
residues,  namely  the  paling  of  memories  and  the 
weakness  of  affects  of  impressions  no  longer 
fresh,  are  really  secondary  transformations  which 
are  brought  about  by  laborious  effort.  It  is  the 
fore-conscious  which  performs  this  work,  and 
psychotherapy  can  take  no  other  course  than  sub- 


50     MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 
jecting  the  Unconscious  to  the  control  of  the  fore- 


conscious." 


B.    Repression 

The  real  causes  of  our  behaviour  are  hidden 
from  us,  as  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  the  things 
we  thought  we  had  forgotten  are  not  completely 
destroyed.  And  the  reason  they  seem  to  be  for- 
gotten is  that  they  no  longer  occur  to  us.  They  no 
longer  occur  to  us  because  they  have  been  re- 
pressed, and  carry  with  them  into  the  Unconscious, 
as  they  are  repressed,  other  things  which  are  men- 
tally associated  with  them.  This  repression  is  so 
nearly  perfect  that  it  may  be  said  that  most  of  our 
experiences  have  sunk  into  oblivion.  Ordinarily,  or 
as  we  might  say  normally,  they  cannot  be  awak- 
ened when  once  they  have  lapsed  into  the  Uncon- 
scious. And  there  is  a  very  good  reason  for  this, 
— namely,  that  the  power  that  has  done  the  re- 
pressing is  still  at  work  continuing  the  repression, 
and  making  it  more  and  more  permanent  as  time 
goes  on. 

In  order  to  account  for  the  state  of  anything, 
we  are  obliged  to  frame  a  theory  of  the  manner 
in  which  that  thing  came  into  existence.  Our 
modern  attitude  toward  nature  is  not  as  it  once 
was.  Modern  science  is  not  satisfied  with  barren 
labelling  and  ticketing  and  dividing  into  classes 
according  to  the  presence  or  absence  of  a  certain 


REPRESSION  51 

quality.  The  most  modern  trend  of  scientific 
thought  is  to  make  a  theory  and  then  make  it 
work,  if  possible.  If  it  does  not,  we  give  it  up, 
and  try  another.  The  path  of  the  progress  of 
science  is  paved  with  abandoned  theories.  It  is 
quite  possible  that  many  of  the  present  theories 
will  be  given  up  for  better  ones.  The  Unconscious 
is  a  theory  proposed  for  the  explanation  of  a 
great  many  phenomena  of  mental  life,  and  an- 
other is  that  concerning  the  prime  mover  of 
human  action.  This  prime  mover  of  human  ac- 
tion is  called  by  Bergson  the  elan  vital,  by  Jung 
horme,  by  Freud  libido.  The  name  which  I  have 
used  in  this  book  is  the  Craving,  proposed  by 
Putnam  as  the  best  English  equivalent  of  the  word 
libido.  It  is  the  power  which  many  have  called 
love.  Each  name  has  its  defects,  and  I  have  only 
chosen  the  one  which  seemed  to  me  to  have  the 
fewest. 

These  two  theories — first,  that  a  large  part  of 
our  mental  life  is  unconscious  (unknown  or  un- 
knowable), and  second,  that  a  creative  force,  by 
whatever  name  it  may  be  called,  is  constantly  im- 
pelling all  animate  life — have  been  used  together 
in  working  out  the  science  of  psychoanalysis. 
The  prime  mover  of  the  human  soul,  then,  is  its 
continual  Craving  for  Life,  for  Love  and  for 
Action.  Its  craving  for  Life  is  easily  understood, 
for  without  it  the  individual  would  seek  annihila- 


52     MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

tion  with  as  much  eagerness  as  the  ordinary 
person  seeks  to  continue  his  life.  Our  conscious 
life  is  generally  little  troubled  by  definite  thoughts 
of  our  processes  of  maintaining  our  physical  or- 
ganism. We  all  want  our  three  or  four  meals  a 
day  and  are  more  or  less  impossible  if  we  do  not 
get  what  we  want  to  eat  where  and  when  we  want 
it,  and  in  sufficient  quantities  to  make  us  feel  geni- 
ally satisfied.  Few  of  us  that  are  not  troubled 
with  dyspepsia  ever  give  our  food  another 
thought  after  we  have  eaten  it,  and  that  is  quite  as 
it  should  be.  Some  of  us  do  not  know  where  our 
stomachs  or  our  hearts  or  livers  are,  and  in  truth 
it  is  really  no  business  of  ours  to  be  thinking  of 
such  things.  For  all  these  processes,  the  finished 
product  of  seons  of  evolution,  are  the  business  of 
that  part  of  the  Unconscious  which  has  been 
called  the  biochemical  level.  Of  course  we  all 
have  been  acquainted  at  some  time  or  other  with 
people  (some  men,  but  more  women)  who,  to  use 
an  old-fashioned  expression,  "  enjoy  poor  health." 
These  people  do,  possibly  through  no  fault  of 
their  own,  get  to  thinking  after  a  slight  illness 
about  what  is  the  cause  of  it  and  how  their  various 
digestive  organs  work,  and  so  on.  "  So  on " 
comprises  the  fact  that  such  people  frame  gro- 
tesque theories  as  to  the  physiological  processes 
that  have  been  temporarily  thrown  out  of  gear, 
theories  which  the  newer  psychologists,  the  medi- 


REPRESSION  53 

cal  school,  have  called  not  without  a  dry  humour 
"  phantasies." 

If  the  Unconscious  were  satisfied  to  stay  at  the 
biochemical  level  mentioned  above  we  probably 
should  not  ever  have  discovered  its  existence,  and 
the  child's  questions  about  where  we  are  when  we 
are  asleep  or  where  our  thoughts  are  when  we  are 
not  thinking  them  would  either  have  been  un- 
answered or  would  continue  to  be  answered  in  the 
historically  evasive  way.  But  the  Unconscious, 
craving  not  only  to  live  but  to  love  and  to  act,  has 
pervaded  our  every  thought  and  action,  and  con- 
trols us,  a  mysterious  unseen  power  that  has 
escaped  detection  until  this  twentieth  century.  It 
has  been  faintly  guessed  at  even  from  the  time  of 
the  earliest  Greek  philosophers,  but  now  the 
psychoanalysts  have  begun  to  examine  it  in  the 
laboratory  and  apply  the  methods  of  modern 
science  to  it. 

Why,  then,  can  we  not  recall  the  greater  part 
of  our  past  experiences?  Because  they  are  re- 
pressed. Why,  then,  are  they  repressed?  Be- 
cause of  the  controlling  power  of  the  Uncon- 
scious, which  permits  only  a  dim  glimmer  of  light 
to  filter  through  the  curtain  of  the  past.  It  will 
naturally  occur  to  the  reader  that  all  this  seems 
to  imply  a  purpose  on  the  part  of  the  Unconscious. 
An  indefinite  desire  it  is,  but  not  a  purpose.  We 
are  forced  to  infer  that  the  Unconscious,  called  by 


54    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

us  the  Titan,  thinks  in  its  elemental  way,  and  in 
archaic  modes,  and  is  satisfied  with  broad  and 
primal  gratifications.  We  have  seen  this  in  re- 
gard to  the  nutritive  functions,  as  indicated  above. 
The  mode  of  thought  governing  this  Titan 
which  plays  so  important  a  part  in  the  affairs  of 
men  may  be  described  somewhat  as  follows:  It 
gets  great  satisfaction  from  a  feeling  of  superior- 
ity, of  greater  strength  or  power,  when  comparing 
itself  with  other  individuals.  In  fact,  it  seems  al- 
ways to  be  comparing  itself  in  point  of  power  with 
some  other  fellow-being,  mostly  human,  of  its  en- 
vironment. If,  then,  it  succeeds  in  demonstrating 
to  itself  its  superiority  in  any  given  situation,  all 
well  and  good.  It  tries  to  make  this  situation  per- 
manent. But  if,  on  the  other  hand,  it  finds  itself 
in  a  situation  where  it  is  at  a  disadvantage,  it 
does  two  things,  frequently  both  at  the  same  time. 
It  ignores  as  far  as  possible,  and  it  would  amaze 
the  reader  to  learn  how  far  that  is  sometimes,  all 
the  circumstances  surrounding  such  a  demonstra- 
tion of  inferiority,  abolishing  the  situation  to- 
gether with  myriads  of  associations  connected  with 
it.  It  is  much  as  if  a  sculptor,  seeing  that  his  statue 
was  inferior  to  some  other  artist's,  or  even  think- 
ing erroneously  that  it  was  inferior,  should  de- 
stroy it,  together  with  the  studio  in  which  it  was 
modelled  and  all  the  materials  and  modelling 
tools.  The  other  thing  that  the  Unconscious  Ti- 


REPRESSION  55 

tan  does  in  such  a  situation  is  to  seek  immedi- 
ate satisfaction  for  his  disappointment  in  some 
activity  generally  much  lower  in  the  moral  scale. 
The  sculptor  demolishes  his  statue,  burns  up  his 
studio,  and  gets  beastly  drunk  himself.  As  a  mat- 
ter of  fact,  every  drink  of  alcoholic  liquor  that  is 
drunk  in  the  world,  or  has  ever  been  drunk,  has 
been  imbibed  for  exactly  that  reason.  The  same 
remark  applies  to  all  the  drugs  of  stimulating  or 
narcotic  character,  particularly  when  their  use  has 
become  a  habit.  A  stimulating  drink  is  taken 
admittedly  for  the  purpose  of  driving  away  dull 
care,  of  forgetting  unhappiness,  of  increasing  the 
sense  of  power.  It  does  increase  the  sense  of 
power,  but  it  very  soon  decreases  the  power  itself. 
In  increasing  the  sense  of  power,  which  is  purely 
subjective,  it  thus  makes  a  direct  appeal  to  the 
imagination,  and  solely  to  the  imagination,  of  the 
drinker.  In  making  an  appeal  to  the  imagination 
it  drives  the  drinker  to  the  baleful  resource  of 
gaining  his  satisfactions  from  himself  and  not 
from  his  effective  work  upon  the  world  of  reality 
outside  of  himself.  This,  as  will  be  seen  later,  is 
driving  the  drinker  back  to  his  own  infancy,  when 
he  had  no  cares  and  when  all  his  wants  were  sup- 
plied to  him  from  his  mother.  In  this  sense  all 
drinking  of  stimulating  liquors  is  a  projecting  of 
oneself  back  to  the  days  of  his  first  drink  at  his 
mother's  breast,  or  its  successor  or  substitute,  the 


56    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

rubber-nippled  bottle.  The  drinker  is  still,  as  he 
was  when  a  baby  in  years  only,  fond  of  his  bottle. 

Now,  the  feeling  of  inferiority,  which  is  the 
source  of  the  most  painful  mental  states  that  we 
experience,  is  a  matter  of  comparison,  of  judg- 
ment; and  the  Titan  within  us  judges  very 
roughly.  It  is  pathetic  to  learn  of  the  low  esti- 
mate that  some  very  good  workmen  place  upon 
their  productions.  But  the  fact  that  concerns  us 
here  is  that  the  action  or  performance,  whether  it 
was  really  good  or  bad,  acquires  the  quality  of 
being  too  terrible  to  be  borne,  and,  as  it  is  too 
terrible  to  be  borne,  the  mind  refuses  to  think  of  it 
and  begins  actively  to  abolish  it  and  the  memory 
of  it.  It  is  perfectly  patent  that  we  do  not  like 
places  where  we  have  suffered  defeats  of  various 
kinds,  and  we  naturally  return  to  localities  where 
we  have  had  a  good  time.  In  the  one  place  every 
sight  recalls  the  defeat,  and  the  unpleasant  feel- 
ings originally  aroused  by  it  are  revived,  and  in 
the  other  place  we  are  reminded  of  the  pleasures 
and  gratifications  we  have  had  there. 

In  short,  what  determines  the  repression,  or 
the  banishing  of  memories  and  thoughts  associ- 
ated with  them,  is  the  sense  of  intolerability  that 
is  awakened.  It  is  quite  surprising  to  learn  what 
things  are  regarded  as  intolerable  by  some  per- 
sons, not  merely  those  who  are  mentally  abnormal 
but  those  who  are  in  every  other  respect  absolutely 


REPRESSION  57 

wholesome  humans.  For  the  drinker  the  intoler- 
able thing  is  that  he  may  have  to  go  without  that 
feeling  which  the  drink  produces  in  him.  The 
fact,  too,  that  the  intolerable  thing  to  the  drinker 
is  the  absence  of  a  certain  subjective  feeling,  de- 
rived from  a  process  of  doing  a  species  of  violence 
to  himself,  places  his  act  at  once  in  the  class  of 
solitary  vices,  no  matter  how  many  of  his  fellow- 
infants  he  may  be  practising  it  with.  A  room  full 
of  opium  smokers  is  another  instance  of  this  same 
retirement  into  the  subjective  world,  apart  from 
their  fellows,  no  matter  how  gregarious  they 
might  look  to  a  casual  observer. 

The  Unconscious,  then,  represses  what  seems 
intolerable  to  it,  the  standard  of  tolerability  being 
very  different  in  different  individuals.  Moreover, 
it  constantly  resorts  to  any  means  whatever  by 
which  it  may  gain  a  feeling  of  superiority,  and  in 
this  its  methods  are  bizarre  and  grotesque,  not  to 
say  weird.  They  have  a  continual  tendency  to 
be  or  to  become  petty.  In  a  crowded  city  street 
it  is  a  custom  of  the  drivers,  mostly  of  business 
wagons,  if  they  see  a  man  walking  across  the 
street  in  front  of  them,  to  whip  up  their  horses 
and  try,  not  to  run  over  him,  but  to  make  him 
jump  out  of  the  way.  In  so  doing  they  produce 
an  immediate  visible  effect  on  a  person  whom  they 
could  not  command  with  words.  Another  in- 
stance of  the  same  satisfaction  derived  by  a  sim- 


5 8     MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

ilar  petty  act  was  confessed  to  me  by  an  educator 
who  had  recently  bought  a  Ford  car.  His  diffi- 
culties in  managing  to  learn  to  drive  it  were  more 
than  offset,  apparently,  and  any  sense  of  inferior- 
ity was  fully  compensated  for,  by  the  immense  joy 
he  derived  from  seeing  men,  women  and  children 
jump  and  start  back  when  he  sounded  his  horn! 
Of  course  it  may  be  said  that  he  was  conscious 
that  he  enjoyed  the  sensation  of  seeing  the  people 
jump  at  the  sound  of  his  horn,  but  he  surely  would 
not  have  mentioned  it  with  such  glee,  if  he  had  re- 
flected that  he  was  taking  a  petty  satisfaction  from 
the  power  with  which  the  possession  of  the  horn 
furnished  him,  as  a  compensation  for  awkward- 
ness in  the  management  of  his  new  automobile. 
And  this  is  an  educator,  a  man  not  only  in  the 
full  possession  of  all  his  faculties,  but  a  cultivated 
gentleman  of  power  and  refinement.  Do  we 
wonder  that  ignorant  drivers  of  horses  like  to 
show  their  power? 

Another  instance.  Did  you  ever  hand  any- 
thing to  a  person  at  that  person's  request  and 
have  him  or  her  accidentally  (?)  and  quite  in- 
nocently look  away  at  just  the  minute  you  were 
handing  it  to  her  or  him?  A  gentle  reminder 
that  you  are  still  proffering  it  produces  a  sudden 
start  in  that  person,  and  an  apology,  more  or  less 
feeble.  But  reflect  on  the  situation.  What  does 
it  mean  to  the  Unconscious  of  the  offending  per- 


REPRESSION  59 

son?  It  means  that  It,  the  Titan  belonging  to 
that  sort  of  irritating  person,  or  perhaps  to  whom 
that  person  belongs,  is  taking  a  satisfaction  from 
the  fact  that  as  long  as  you  stand  holding  the  ob- 
ject you  are  Its  servant;  and  you  will  notice 
that  very  perverse  people  will  prolong  such  a  situ- 
ation just  as  far  as  they  can.  I  purposely  take 
examples  of  petty  actions,  because  they  are  gen- 
erally so  unconscious.  There  are  a  great  number 
of  conscious  perversities  in  people  coming  from 
downright  meanness  of  character  that  I  do  not 
need  to  describe,  such  as  continued  refusal  to 
give  you  a  thing  you  ask  for  and  have  a  right  to, 
and  many  other  actions.  The  conversational 
bore  is  one  who  takes  his  satisfaction,  which  means 
exerting  a  kind  of  power,  which  again  means  cre- 
ating and  maintaining  a  situation  in  which  he  in 
a  certain  sense  becomes  your  superior,  in  using  his 
word-making  apparatus  simply  and  solely  for  the 
purpose  of  commanding  your  attention. 

One  of  the  sources  from  which  the  infantile  Un- 
conscious draws  its  sense  of  power,  which  it 
needs  must  draw  in  order  to  get  the  satisfaction 
derivable  from  the  removal  of  the  sense  of  infe- 
riority, is  from  simple  negativism.  It  is  pointed  out 
in  another  place  that  the  mere  negation  of  a  prop- 
osition is  of  no  psychological  value  whatever.  A 
mere  verbal  contradiction  is  psychologically  equiv- 
alent only  to  a  complete  repetition  of  the  idea 


60    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

adding  a  negative  sign  to  it.  It  really  does  not 
change  the  proposition  at  all.  It  accepts  the 
statement  in  to  to  without  variation.  The  nega- 
tive is  no  variation  on  any  theme.  Similarly  with 
negativistic  acts.  If,  told  to  do  something,  a  child 
does  exactly  the  opposite,  it  is  more  than  half 
accepting  the  suggestion.  A  more  complete  re- 
jection of  the  suggestion  would  be  to  do  some- 
thing of  an  entirely  different  nature.  The  most 
complete  rejection  of  any  verbal  suggestion  is 
totally  ignoring  it  and  talking  about  something 
else,  illustrated  by  the  boy  who  was  scolded  by 
his  teacher,  and  remarked  in  a  perfectly  unruffled 
tone  that  he  had  observed  that  the  teacher's  upper 
jaw  did  not  move  while  she  was  speaking.  Thus 
complete  diversion  is  seen  to  be  the  only  form  of 
psychological  negation  possible.  This  is  prac- 
tised by  skilful  handlers  of  their  fellow-men,  who, 
realising,  though  perhaps  only  unconsciously,  that 
a  contradiction  is  only  a  following  of  the  sug- 
gestion of  the  other  person  but  with  a  negative 
sign,  so  to  speak,  succeed  in  pleasantly  instilling 
their  own  ideas  into  the  minds  of  others,  at  the 
same  time  persuading  them  to  believe  that  they 
are  desirable. 

All  these  modes  of  behaviour  on  the  part  of  civ- 
ilised and  more  or  less  educated  persons  show  the 
working  of  their  Unconscious  even  in  their  small- 
est acts.  Some  of  them  know,  possibly,  that  they 


REPRESSION  61 

are  examples  of  bad  habits  or  impoliteness,  but 
they  are  mostly  unable  to  change,  because  the  un- 
conscious satisfaction  that  they  derive  puts  them  in 
a  good  humour  with  themselves,  and  the  effort  to 
accomplish  the  contrary  produces  a  strange  un- 
easiness in  them  which  they  do  not  understand 
because  they  do  not  know  of  the  implications  which 
I  have  outlined  above. 

Complete  retention,  therefore,  of  all  experi- 
ences, and  equally  complete  repression  of  all  ex- 
periences that  are  not  needed  for  the  performance 
of  our  everyday  duties,  are  what  characterise  the 
Unconscious  on  the  passive  side.  A  blind  desire 
which  consciousness  is  perpetually  directing  to- 
ward higher  aims  and  which  the  Unconscious  is 
ever  tending  to  drag  down  to  the  archaic  level  is 
the  salient  quality  of  the  Titan  on  the  active  side. 
When  I  spoke  above  of  experiences  that  are  not 
needed  for  the  performance  of  our  everyday 
duties,  I  referred  to  the  essentially  perfunctory 
way  in  which  so  many  of  us  get  through  our  daily 
work.  From  one  point  of  view  it  appears  that  if 
we  could  keep  in  the  fore-conscious,  within  easy 
call,  a  goodly  number  of  our  fortunate  experiences 
for  inspiration  and  illumination  we  should  be  so 
heartened  by  them  that  every  act  throughout  the 
day  would  be  a  triumph  of  joy.  It  would  seem  as 
if  the  rule  ought  to  work  both  ways.-  If  the  Uncon- 
scious succeeds  in  banishing  past  events  and  the 


62     MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

emotions  connected  with  them,  why  should  it  not 
invite  and  entertain  the  pleasant  memories,  to 
cheer  us  on  our  way?  To  a  certain  extent  it  does 
this,  to  be  sure. 

Here  we  come  upon  the  third  main  point  that 
we  have  continually  to  bear  in  mind  as  a  character- 
istic of  the  Unconscious.  It  has  been  shown  that 
the  repressions  consist  of  repressed  ideas,  scenes, 
sounds  and  what  not,  and  repressed  emotions. 
From  the  time  of  Achilles  sulking  in  his  tent  on 
account  of  losing  Chryseis  as  his  part  of  the  booty, 
down  to  the  time  of  Mr.  Wiggs  of  the  Cabbage 
Patch,  who  went  out  into  the  woodhouse  and 
swore  at  the  wood,  which  mightily  relieved  his 
feelings,  men  and  particularly  women  have  either 
vented  their  wrath,  which  has  been  good  for  their 
health  if  not  for  that  of  others,  or  have  swallowed 
their  feelings,  a  procedure  that  has  never  done 
them  any  good,  but  has  perhaps  spared  their 
friends  and  relatives.  Now,  the  repression  of  the 
emotions  is  the  ultimate  cause  of  the  repression — 
that  is,  the  forgetting — of  the  ideas.  The  venting 
of  the  wrath  symbolises  the  getting  rid  of  almost 
any  kind  of  deleterious  material  from  the  system. 
The  happiest  individuals  on  the  whole  are  those 
who  can  work  off  all  their  uneasinesses,  not  to  say 
their  diseases,  by  appropriate  actions.  But  the  re- 
quirements of  modern  civilised  society  are  such 
that  we  frequently  have  to  repress  the  frank  ex- 


REPRESSION  63 

pression  of  our  emotions.  The  history  of  the 
repressed  emotion  is  what  now  concerns  us.  For 
it  has  been  discovered  by  the  newer  psychology 
that  these  repressed  emotions  are  merely  driven 
back,  down  into  the  Unconscious.  They  do  not 
abate  a  jot  or  tittle  of  their  intensity,  buferather 
keep  on  growing.  In  extreme  cases,  instead  of  re- 
maining a  branch  as  it  were  of  our  own  person- 
ality, our  "  queer  streak,"  they  form  independent 
individualities  of  themselves,  so  that  we  have,  in 
our  supposedly  one  Ego,  two  or  more  person- 
alities. 

This  is  what  I  might  call  the  distracted  Soul. 
We  are  all  more  or  less  distracted.  The  line  be- 
tween what  is  called  sanity  and  what  is  called 
insanity  is,  as  everyone  well  knows,  almost,  if  not 
quite,  impossible  to  draw.  We  are  distracted  in  a 
mild  degree,  of  course,  if  we  try  to  play  the  piano 
and  talk  at  the  same  time,  unless  we  are  pretty 
good  players,  or  if  at  a  social  gathering  we  try  to 
listen  to  two  conversations  at  the  same  time. 
These  are,  however,  but  intellectual  distractions. 
The  emotional  one  is  what  comes  from  a  sorrow 
or  a  disappointment  buried  in  the  Unconscious. 
For  in  the  Unconscious  it  is  alive  and  not  an- 
nihilated, and  what  is  worse  it  is  in  your  Uncon- 
scious and  no  one's  else  and  playing  havoc  with 
your  mind  and  soul  and  with  that  of  no  one  else 
but  yourself.  The  sights  and  sounds  that  we  have 


64     MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

seen  and  heard  would  of  themselves  do  no  mis- 
chief if  it  were  not  for  the  emotions  that  they  are 
so  closely  bound  up  with.  It  is  somewhat  as  if 
we  found  a  waste-basket  on  fire,  and  instead  of 
putting  out  the  fire  we  carefully  put  it  up  attic  or 
down  cellar  and  shut  the  door  and  locked  it,  per- 
haps threw  away  the  key !  But  that  is  what  we  do 
when  we  repress  emotions.  It  damages  our  house 
if  it  does  not  burn  it  down.  Possibly  the  fire 
department  or  the  doctor  is  called  in,  as  the  case 
may  be,  and  saves  some  part  of  our  physical  or 
mental  edifice.  But  we  were  only  an  ignorant  serv- 
ant and  knew  no  better. 

So  it  appears  that  we  have  to  conceive  of  for- 
getting in  a  new  way.  We  naturally  speak  of  for- 
getting some  things  as  if  by  so  doing  we  could  put 
them  out  of  existence.  We  think  that  by  keeping 
an  unpleasant  experience  or  an  unfortunate  one 
out  of  mind  we  can  make  it  as  if  it  had  never  been. 
On  the  other  hand,  I  have  said  above  that  many 
of  the  experiences  of  the  past  are  banished  to  the 
Unconscious  in  such  a  way  that  it  is  impossible  to 
reawaken  them.  And  there  seems  to  be  a  sort  of 
contradiction  in  these  two  statements.  But  the  ex- 
periences that  are  banished  to  the  Unconscious  are 
forgotten  by  our  conscious  mind.  They  have  been 
pushed  down  from  the  fore-conscious  into  the  Un- 
conscious, and  they  are  "  forgotten "  by  the 
former  but  not  by  the  latter,  which  is  unable  to 


INDEPENDENT  VITALITY          65 

"  forget,"  in  that  sense,  anything  at  all.  So  when 
we  say  that  we  have  forgotten  or  buried  a  memory 
of  a  sorrow  or  a  disappointment,  we  can  really 
mean  only  that  we  have  exiled  it  from  the  fore- 
conscious,  whence  it  would  have  an  easy  access  at 
all  times  to  our  conscious  life,  and  might  em- 
barrass us  by  inopportune  emergence  at  awkward 
times,  to  the  Unconscious,  whence  it  never  emerges 
at  all,  at  least  in  its  original  shape. 

C.    Independent  Vitality 

The  real  causes  of  our  conduct  are  concealed 
from  us,  continually,  because  the  mental  states, 
repressed  into  the  Unconscious  by  virtue  of  the  un- 
pleasant feelings  originally  associated  with  them, 
— in  other  words,  the  unpleasant  or  painful  feeling 
tone  which  the  experiences  had  at  the  time, — are 
undergoing  a  continuous  development  below  the 
level  of  consciousness.  For  while  the  experience  is 
"  forgotten,"  is  banished  to  the  dark  realm  of  the 
Unconscious,  it  has,  as  we  have  seen,  lost  none  of 
its  independent  vitality,  but  it  continues  to  de- 
velop, and  what  is  still  more  important  for  us,  it 
keeps  on  influencing  us,  indirectly,  to  be  sure,  and 
in  dark  and  hitherto  mysterious  ways.  The  prin- 
ciple of  the  conservation  of  matter  in  the  science 
of  physics  declares  that  no  atom  is  ever  destroyed. 
Shapes  that  we  have  seen  are  seen  no  more,  and 


66    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

the  molecules  of  matter  that  formed  the  substance 
of  what  we  saw  have  been  broken  up  and  have 
taken  other  shapes,  but  the  atoms  composing  them 
have  only  been  differently  arranged  in  space  and 
have  lost  none  of  their  substance  or  proper  activ- 
ity. We  may  posit  a  similar  conservation  prin- 
ciple in  psychic  life.  The  experience  is  as  it  were 
destroyed,  forgotten,  banished  from  recollection. 
It  is  as  if  burned  up  and  transformed  into  gases 
and  ashes.  But  if  it  can  no  longer  enter  our  minds 
in  its  original  form,  it  nevertheless  can  and  does 
affect  our  lives  and  actions  in  another  form.  In 
some  shape  it  is  perfectly  and  completely  con- 
served. It  can  and  does  enter  our  lives  under 
various  disguises. 

The  real  causes  for  the  particular  acts  of  our 
everyday  lives  are  hidden  from  us,  because  they 
are  not  available  for  presentation  to  consciousness 
in  their  crassly  archaic  forms.  The  manners  and 
customs  of  some  of  our  ancestors  not  so  very  re- 
mote would  shock  our  present-day  sense  of  pro- 
priety. From  the  extremely  archaic  impulses 
which  daily  emanate  from  the  Unconscious  ourt 
gaze  is  necessarily  averted.  Yet  in  order  to  enter! 
the  light  of  consciousness  their  nature  has  to  be 
apparently  changed.  They  are  ceaselessly  strug- 
gling to  enter  consciousness  because  of  their  super- 
abundant vitality.  Similiarly  the  occurrences  in 
our  own  lives  which  are  so  painful  or  unpleasant 


SYMBOLISM  67 

that  our  consciousness  shrinks  from  them  at  the 
time  we  first  experience  them  are  still  retained  in 
the  Unconscious  and  are  continuously  striving  for 
an  outlet  into  the  consciousness.  They  do  not 
succeed  in  doing  so  until  they  have  been  trans- 
muted into  a  form  in  which  our  conscious  sensi- 
tiveness no  longer  recoils  from  them. 

D.    Symbolism 

The  disguises  under  which  the  Unconscious 
presents  to  our  conscious  lives  the  experiences 
that  have  been  repressed  on  account  of  their  pain- 
ful qualities  have  been  studied  by  psychoanalysis 
under  the  name  of  symbols.  A  symbol  in  the  ordi- 
nary sense  is  merely  an  emblem  like  the  national 
flag,  or  a  trademark,  which  represents  in  the  one 
case  some  sentiment  such  as  patriotism,  and  on 
the  other  hand  a  certain  standard  of  excellence  in 
making  of  a  kind  of  goods.  But  a  symbol  in  the 
newer  sense  is  an  idea  which  takes  the  place  of  the 
ideas  that  have  become  too  painful  to  be  borne  by 
the  conscious  life,  and  so  to  speak  represents  in 
consciousness  the  idea  that  is  buried  in  the  Uncon- 
scious. It  is  a  sort  of  euphemism,  or  speaking  of 
an  unpleasant  fact  by  means  of  a  word  generally 
having  pleasant  associations.  In  the  newer  sense, 
too,  the  symptom  of  a  disease  is  sometimes  also  a 
symbol,  as  for  instance  when  the  fear  of  crossing 


68     MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

open  places  is  seen  to  be  the  symptom  of  the 
mental  disease  called  hysteria,  and  symbolises  a 
fear  of  quite  a  different  sort  which  is  in  the  Un- 
conscious, and  never  appears  above  the  threshold 
because  too  terrible  to  be  faced  consciously. 

It  is  thought  by  some  of  those  doing  research 
in  psychoanalysis  that  the  symbol  in  this  sense  is 
always  the  substitute  in  consciousness  for  a 
thought  or  group  of  thoughts  or  feelings  which 
are  unable  to  enter  consciousness  themselves, 
but  which  find  a  vicarious  admittance  into  our 
waking  life  through  the  symbols.  If,  then,  it  is 
found  that  a  large  proportion  of  our  thoughts  and 
actions  not  to  say  physical  conditions,  are  sym- 
bols or  substitutes  for  something  of  which  we  are 
totally  ignorant,  then  certainly  it  will  be  evident 
that  the  more  we  can  learn  about  their  real  mean- 
ing (which  is  the  things  that  they  only  stand  for 
and  themselves  are  not),  the  better  we  shall  un- 
derstand human  conduct  in  general. 

Pfister  tells  of  a  girl  who  was  troubled  with 
chronic  constipation.  Her  duties  about  the  house 
became  excessively  unpleasant  to  her.  The  psycho- 
analysis to  which  Pfister,  her  pastor  and  teacher, 
subjected  her  revealed  the  fact  that  what  she  hated 
worse  about  her  housework  were  activities  con- 
nected with  cleaning  and  dusting.  She  could  not 
tell  why  this  was  so,  but  when  it  was  suggested  to 
her  that  her  dislike  of  cleaning  and  dusting  the 


SYMBOLISM  69 

house  was  but  an  outward  symbol  of  the  same  wish 
which  made  her  constipated,  and  that  the  cleaning 
of  the  house  symbolised  the  cleaning  of  her  own 
intestinal  tract,  she  took  hold  of  the  proposition 
with  a  will,  and  all  her  difficulties  came  to  an  end. 
Her  wish  not  to  be  clean  in  one  respect  is  analo- 
gous to  the  wish  not  to  be  clean  in  another.  She 
knows  both  circumstances,  but  is  not  aware  of  the 
connection  between  them.  But  when  told  by  the 
analyser  that  the  constipation  was  not  an  isolated 
affair,  but  was  in  direct  causal  connection  with  her 
unwillingness  to  do  cleaning  work  in  other  direc- 
tions, the  whole  thing  took  on  a  new  appearance 
and  she  saw  the  domestic  laziness  as  a  symbol  of 
another  form  of  disinclination. 

If  an  experience  which  has  been  a  terrible  shock 
to  any  one  of  us,  and  the  feelings  and  emotions 
associated  with  it  have  not  at  the  time  of  the  ex- 
perience been  allowed  for  some  reason  to  find 
their  natural  outlet  in  action  or  in  a  recourse  to 
human  sympathy  and  understanding,  if  such  an 
experience  is  repressed,  there  results  a  condition 
much  like  a  boiler  generating  steam,  but  with  no 
work  being  done,  no  outlet  except  the  safety  valve. 
The  fire  of  our  animal  vitality  goes  right  on  gener- 
ating more  and  more  steam.  The  energy  issues 
from  the  safety  valve  in  amorphous  clouds,  in- 
stead of  the  formal  and  definite  reciprocation  of 
the  piston  and  the  smooth  and  regular  turning  of 


yo     MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

the  wheels.  The  symbols  are  the  safety  valve's 
outrush  of  steam.  To  carry  the  simile  one  step 
farther,  we  may  say  that  the  human  machine,  here 
compared  to  a  steam  boiler,  has  (or  itself  forms) 
many  safety  valves,  each  one  of  them  a  different 
group  of  symbols,  if,  and  only  if,  the  engine  which 
it  is  designed  by  its  maker  to  set  in  motion  be 
either  cut  off  or  be  too  small  to  use  up  all  the 
energy  generated  in  the  boiler.  As  an  example  of 
steam  power  cut  off  from  its  engine,  take  the 
case  of  a  business  man  who  retires  and  does  not 
find  employment  for  his  faculties,  or  the  lover 
who  has  lost  his  mistress.  Each  must  find  another 
absorbing  interest  or  perish,  at  least  mentally. 
Of  course  there  are  physiques  that  go  on  for 
years  as  merely  physical  organisms,  without  per- 
ceptible mentality  more  than  is  enough  to  keep 
them  eating,  dressing  and  undressing. 

This  is,  to  be  sure,  but  a  very  broad  statement 
about  symbols,  and  is  necessarily  extremely  in- 
definite. To  go  into  details  here,  for  instance,  as 
to  the  reason  why  I  signifies  male,  2  female,  why 
red  is  sometimes  masculine  while  at  other  times 
blue  is  the  masculine  colour,  would  require  too 
much  space  in  the  present  treatment  of  the 
subject. 

Here,  however,  it  should  be  remembered  chiefly 
that  any  idea,  thing  or  action  may  become,  as  in 
fact  all  things  have  become,  for  all  of  us,  a  con- 


THE  CENSOR  71 

scious  symbol  (or,  a  symbol  in  consciousness)  for 
another  idea  or  emotion  or  group  of  ideas  or  emo- 
tions which  have  been  repressed  into  our  Uncon- 
scious because  they  are  themselves  regarded  by  us 
as  too  terrible  to  be  faced  consciously.  This  is 
the  cause  of  so  many  pleasant,  not  to  say  comical, 
euphemisms  for  the  idea  of  death,  such  as  "  kick- 
ing the  bucket,"  "  turned  up  his  toes  to  the 
daisies,"  etc.,  and  it  is  the  cause  of  our  dreams 
being  so  apparently  nonsensical. 

E.    The  Censor 

The  real  causes  of  our  daily  behaviour  are  con- 
cealed from  us.  If,  as  Kaplan  says,  we  regard  the 
Unconscious  and  the  Conscious  as  separate  locali- 
ties, there  is  a  boundary  between  them  across 
which  the  wishes  of  the  Unconscious  have  to  pass 
before  attaining  the  light  of  conscious  life.  At 
this  boundary  line  there  is  situated  an  inhibitive 
power  preventing  these  unconscious  wishes  from 
passing  unless  they  are  masked  by  the  symbolisms 
referred  to  in  the  preceding  section. 

Under  the  influence  of  the  human  society  in 
which  we  live  we  do  many  things  and  we  avoid 
doing  many  other  things.  It  is  shown  by  psycho- 
analysis that  the  combined  effect  of  the  interests 
of  all  the  people  with  whom  we  live  in  relations 
of  greater  or  less  amity  is  represented,  so  to  speak, 


72     MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

by  a  deterrent  force  residing  in  our  ego  and  pre- 
venting us  from  stepping  outside  of  the  bounds  of 
propriety.  This  deterrent  force  was  compared 
by  Freud  to  a  censor.  Just  as  a  censor  of  some 
government  (in  our  present  metaphor,  the  con- 
scious) goes  over  the  letters  and  communications 
of  other  kinds  that  come  from  some  other  nation 
or  from  all  other  nations  (here  the  Unconscious), 
and  excises  certain  parts  of  the  printed  or  written 
matter,  in  the  same  way  the  so-called  psychic  (or 
endopsychic)  censor  reviews  the  ideas  which  are 
constantly  being  sent  up  from  the  underworld  of 
the  Unconscious,  and  prevents  them  from  entering 
consciousness  except  in  a  form  that  is  unrecog- 
nisable by  the  conscious  part  of  our  ego — namely, 
in  the  form  of  symptoms  and  other  symbols.  The 
Unconscious  thus  keeps  on  delivering  its  messages 
to  us,  messages  which  are  mostly  to  the  effect  that 
it  wishes  to  live,  love  and  act  in  archaic  modes, 
according  to  which  it  has  evolved  through  the 
ages.  But  these  modes  are  in  conflict  with  the 
progress  of  human  society,  and  the  result  is  that 
the  hundreds  of  thousands  of  years  of  ancestry 
behind  us  have  to  be  in  a  sense  curbed  and  re- 
strained or  the  manners  and  morals  which  may 
have  been  the  best  in  prehistoric  times  will,  and 
constantly  do  attempt  to,  assert  themselves  in  the 
actions  of  persons  living  today.  Right  here  it  is 
interesting  to  note  that  the  newest  theory  of  in- 


THE  CENSOR  73 

sanity  is  that  insanity  is  the  regression  of  the  mind 
back  to  prehistoric  modes  of  thought.  There  is 
no  doubt  that  if  a  paleolithic  man  could  be  revived 
and  paraded  on  Broadway,  Broadway  would 
think  him,  and  would  be  obliged  to  think  him, 
completely  insane.  He  could  not  talk  "  United 
States,"  and  just  think  what  he  would  do!  So 
that  it  seems  quite  reasonable  to  suppose  that 
people  of  today  who  lose  their  minds,  as  it  is 
called,  do  nothing  else  than  revert  to  a  mental 
state  that  was  useful  in  archaic  ages,  but  which 
society  of  the  present  day  is  obliged  to  shut  up  to 
keep  from  injuring  themselves  and  other  people. 
And  here  we  see  why  the  line  between  sanity  and 
insanity  is  so  hard  to  draw,  because  some  of  us 
revert  only  a  few  years  or  a  few  centuries,  while 
others  go  back  farther,  and  we  see  in  this  way  that 
the  only  criterion  of  sanity  is  usefulness  to  society, 
the  person  being  most  insane  who  is  least  avail- 
able for  the  work  demanded  of  him  by  society, 
and  least  "  out  of  his  head  "  who  can  carry  on 
some  work  that  his  position  in  economic  society 
requires  of  him.  This  is  only  another  way  of 
saying  that  the  actions  of  such  a  person  are  more 
or  less  uncensored.  Why  is  a  person  called  eccen- 
tric or  "  queer  "  ?  Because  he  cannot  do  something 
that  all  the  others  do,  or  if  he  does  it,  performs 
his  duty  in  an  unusual  and  less  serviceable  man- 
ner. This  is  the  most  uncomfortable  aspect  of 


74    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

this  view  of  the  Unconscious,  as  the  uncivilised, 
not  to  say  violent  and  crazy,  Titan  that  each  and 
every  one  of  us  carries  around  all  the  time.  Watch 
him  carefully!  He  it  is  that  breaks  loose  when 
savages  "  run  amuck  "  and  him  we  unchain  when 
we  melt  his  bonds  with  liquor!  Him  we  satisfy 
when  we  do  so  many  things  that  our  conscious  life 
in  soberer  moments  disapproves  of  or  finds  il- 
logical, as  we  look  back  on  our  former  acts  and 
wonder  how  it  was  possible  that  we  ever  could 
have  done  this  or  that  thing,  made  this  or  that 
blunder. 

On  this  side  of  our  nature  I  do  not,  however, 
wish  to  leave  the  reader  gazing.  It  is  enough  to 
lift  for  a  brief  moment  the  veil  which  time  has 
drawn  over  the  past  that  lives  in  the  present.  If 
psychoanalysis  had  been  able  to  do  no  more  than 
this,  its  results  would  not  have  justified  the  years 
that  have  been  spent  in  its  manifold  researches. 
There  is  one  compensation  for  all  the  repulsive- 
ness  which  a  glance  at  the  depths  of  the  Uncon- 
scious reveals.  As  one  writer  puts  it :  "  Where 
the  brightest  light  is,  there  are  the  darkest  shad- 
ows." Let  us  remember  that  we  have  the  light! 
The  light  does  not  cast  the  shadows ;  they  are  cast 
by  the  objects  that  we  wanted  to  see  when  we 
made  the  light.  The  compensation  for  the  terror 
which  first  strikes  our  hearts  when  we  see  in  the 
/  past  of  our  race  the  dark  outlines,  those  forms 


THE  CENSOR  75 

"  that  tare  each  other  in  their  slime,"  the  ves- 
tigial remains  of  which  are  still  active  in  the 
thoughts  and  actions  of  our  daily  life,  is  the  in- 
dubitable fact  that  for  the  soul  that  realises  these 
conditions  there  is  in  life  nothing  too  terrible  to 
be  borne.  This  is  the  least  of  the  compensations, 
being  merely  negative,  but  there  are  others  far 
greater  and  more  positive. 

To  restate  the  results,  so  far,  of  our  consider- 
ation of  the  manifestations  of  the  Unconscious  in 
our  daily  life:  We  find  the  Unconscious  to  be 
completely  retentive  of  all  past  experiences,  par- 
ticularly of  the  emotions,  completely  repressive 
of  all  except  a  meagre  few  which  are  necessities 
for  our  existence  and  for  what  happiness  we  may 
be  able  to  get  out  of  life,  and  we  find  that  the 
repressed  elements  are  possessed  of  a  vigorous 
vitality,  and  that  they  are  controlled  or  curbed  to 
a  certain  extent  by  an  inhibitory  power  that  has 
been  called  the  psychic  censor.  This  represents 
in  us  the  restraining  force  of  society  upon  us,  and 
acts  as  a  sort  of  agency  for  society  somewhat  as  a 
diplomatic  agent  represents  a  foreign  country, 
but  with  the  added  qualification  that  this  censor 
does  not  merely  excise  from  the  demands  sent  up 
from  the  forces  below;  but,  because  the  demands 
are  so  strong  and  so  insistent  and  so  rudimentary, 
transforms  the  demands  for  life,  love  and  action 
in  such  a  way  that  they  are  unrecognisable.  It  is 


76    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

only  when  we  recognise  that  the  instinct  to  do  cer- 
tain things — to  chew  gum,  for  instance,  is  merely 
a  disguised  demand  on  the  part  of  the  Uncon- 
scious that  we  keep  constantly  munching  at  some- 
thing, in  the  case  of  the  gum  (or  sucking  some- 
thing, such  as  a  pipe  or  a  cigar  or  a  piece  of 
candy) — it  is  only  when  we  recognise  what  is  at 
the  bottom  of  these  impulses  that  we  see  what 
their  true  value  is,  and  in  the  cases  just  mentioned 
the  regression  of  the  desire  to  a  level  of  mere 
nutritive  function.  We  should  be  glad  for  this 
censor  to  abide  with  us  and  especially  happy  to 
have  him  as  well  developed  as  possible  in  other 
people,  because  he  is  in  a  certain  sense  what  keeps 
others  from  making  life  intolerable  to  us.  And 
there  is  a  way  in  which  we  can  help  him  both  in 
ourselves  and  in  others. 

But  before  I  come  to  that  point  I  shall  have  to 
call  attention  to  the  enormous  power  of  the  Un- 
conscious. If  it  is  the  accumulated  desire  in  each 
one  of  us,  of  aeons  of  evolution,  the  present  form, 
in  each  individual,  of  that  vital  force  which  has 
kept  itself  immortal  through  thousands  of  gener- 
ations of  men  behind  us,  and  millions  of  genera- 
tions of  animals  behind  them,  it  need  not  be  any- 
thing but  a  source  of  power  to  us,  power  that  we 
can  draw  on,  if  we  rightly  understand  it,  just  as 
we  turn  on  power  from  a  steam  pipe  or  an  electric 
wire.  It  need  not  be  destructive,  indeed  is  not 


THE  CENSOR  77 

destructive  except  in  the  most  distracted  souls,  but 
on  the  contrary  ought  in  each  one  of  us,  when  we 
have  learned  to  manage  it  rightly,  to  be  as  much 
and  as  completely  at  our  command  as  is  the  power 
in  an  automobile.  As  in  the  automobile,  there  are  a 
few  simple  things  that  we  have  to  learn  and  the 
rest  is  furnished  by  the  maker  of  the  car,  and  we 
do  ill  to  tamper  with  it.  The  experience  of  hav- 
ing a  fifty-horsepower  auto  placed  at  one's  com- 
mand (if  it  is  to  be  driven  by  oneself)  is  a  situa- 
tion into  which  there  are  many  persons,  both  men 
and  women,  who  are  very  loth  to  enter.  And  sim- 
ilarly there  are  many  persons  who  for  various 
causes  would  not  be  willing  to  have  the  fifty-thou- 
sand-generation-power which  resides  in  them  de- 
veloped. There  are  various  reasons  for  this, 
which  will  be  discussed  later. 

We  are  concerned  now  chiefly  with  the  proposi- 
tion that  the  will  to  live,  love  and  act,  conditioned 
as  it  is  by  the  power  which  has  gone  on  living  and 
loving  and  acting  for  countless  generations,  is  the 
only  source  of  all  human  strength.  A  number  of 
religious  sects  have  sprung  up  and  have  called  it 
the  manifestation  of  Deity  or  Deity  itself.  The 
only  point  in  that  connection  concerning  us  here  is 
that  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  and  as  far  as 
human  flesh  is  able  to  endure  the  strain,  this  power 
which  is  largely  in  the  hands  of  the  Unconscious  in 
most  men  and  women  is  illimitable.  Illustrations 


78     MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

of  human  endurance,  perseverance,  ambition  and 
accomplishment  are  unnecessary  to  mention  now, 
as  they  would  but  draw  the  attention  away  from 
the  present  path.  But  it  is  quite  evident  that  the 
persons  who  have  distinguished  themselves  in  his- 
tory for  their  performances  of  various  kinds  have 
not  all  been  people  of  extraordinary  physical 
strength.  They  have,  on  the  other  hand,  some- 
times been  handicapped  try  physical  afflictions,  in 
spite  of  which  they  performed  their  stirring  deeds. 
They  have,  however,  all  been  people  in  whom  the 
power  to  live,  to  love  and  to  act  was  united  upon 
one  object  at  a  time.  The  power  which  they  had 
and  exercised  was  not  dissipated  by  conflicting  ele- 
ments within  themselves.  They  devoted  all  their 
energies  to  a  single  aim  for  long  periods,  and  were 
capable  of  long  and  sustained  effort.  This  is  pos- 
sible only  if  the  Unconscious  is,  as  it  were,  har- 
nessed to  the  same  plough  as  the  conscious  life. 
The  amount  of  work,  physical  or  otherwise,  that 
man,  woman  or  child  can  do  is  known  to  be  meas- 
ured by  what  has  been  called  their  interest.  Now, 
when  interest  flags  and  the  work  is  done  in  a  half- 
hearted way,  it  means  simply  and  solely  that  the 
Unconscious,  which  is  in  a  certain  sense  infantile 
because  it  is  archaic,  childish  because  representing 
in  the  present  the  childhood  of  the  race,  begins  to 
weary  of  the  activity  which  it  is  being  put  through, 
and  sends  wily  wireless  messages  from  the  depths, 


THE  CENSOR  79 

fabricating  all  sorts  of  reasons — some,  if  not  all 
of  them,  very  plausible — for  our  ceasing  the  activ- 
ity in  question  and  doing  something  else.  This 
something  else  is  almost  always  eating  or  drink- 
ing or  taking  some  purely  physical  satisfaction  of  a 
low  order  when  compared  with  the  kind  of  activ- 
ity by  which  the  world  would  most  be  benefited. 

This  concentration  of  the  powers  of  one  indi- 
vidual unitedly  upon  one  aim  is  a  proof  that  the 
souls  of  some  people  are  united;  and  the  different 
degrees  of  unitedness  in  different  individuals  show 
that  progress  can  be  made  in  the  line  of  uniting 
ourselves  to  ourselves.  It  should  not  be  thought 
that  differences  in  native  endowment  are  sufficient 
to  account  for  the  enormous  differences  in  ac- 
complishment, and  a  country  like  the  United 
States  amply  demonstrates  that  different  de- 
grees of  accomplishment  in  social  service  are 
not  limited  in  opportunity.  The  differences  in  the 
practical  results  of  human  endeavour  are  condi- 
tioned solely  by  the  human  endeavour  itself,  and 
that  in  turn  by  the  ability  of  the  individual  to  per- 
form his  work  without  interruption  or  obstacles 
thrown  in  his  way  by  his  Unconscious.  The  true 
alignment  of  the  personality  can  be  accomplished 
by  the  individual  only  by  turning  the  tables,  as  it 
were,  on  the  Unconscious.  If  the  Unconscious 
is,  as  I  have  attempted  to  show,  a  power  plant 
and  now  engaged  in  making  a  multitude  of  gim- 


80    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

cracks  to  be  sold  on  sidewalks  by  peddlers,  it  must 
be  converted  into  a  factory  for  the  specialised  pro- 
duction of  some  one  useful  commodity.  In  human 
literalness,  corresponding  to  this  mechanical  meta- 
phor, we  are  to  give  up  as  many  as  possible  of  the 
distractions,  which  by  a  study  of  the  Unconscious 
we  shall  see  in  their  true  light  as  archaic,  and 
therefore  instances  of  arrested  development,  ar- 
rested as  it  were  in  the  childhood  of  the  race,  and 
substitute  for  them  actions  that  are  more  in  line 
with  the  team  work  called  for  by  the  requirements 
of  modern  progressive  society.  This  necessitates 
our  getting  the  Unconscious  to  take  a  higher  aim 
for  a  lower,  almost  to  cheat  it,  so  to  speak,  into 
believing  that  it  is  eating  when  it  is  working. 

* 

F.    Sublimation 

The  real  causes  of  our  daily  behaviour  having 
been  revealed  to  us  by  psychoanalysis,  we  are  in 
duty  bound  to  reckon  with  them.  When  their 
symbolisms  are  understood  by  consciousness,  a 
definite  line  of  action  has  to  be  pursued  in  order 
to  array  the  unlimited  power  of  those  unconscious 
wishes  on  the  side  of  modern  progressive  social 
action.  This  process  of  enlisting  the  Unconscious 
in  the  work  that  is  available  for  social  purposes  is 
called  Sublimation  because  it  sublimes  (an  old 
word  in  alchemy)  or  sublimates  the  crude  desires 


SUBLIMATION  81 

of  the  Unconscious.  Just  as  the  alchemists  in  the 
early  days  of  science  thought  that  they  could  trans- 
mute the  baser  metals  into  gold,  so  the  philoso- 
phers have  found  that  we  can  change  the  direction 
and  object  of  the  baser  desires  into  higher  ones 
having  in  them  more  gold — that  is,  more  value — 
for  the  modern  development  of  society. 

That  the  old  Titan,  Unconscious,  can  be  coz- 
ened or  cajoled  into  taking  other  substitutes  for 
the  nutritional  aims  that  he  is  always  growling  for 
is  seen  when  we  reflect  on  the  many  amusements 
and  distractions  that  humans  are  always  seeking. 
Not  one  per  cent,  of  them  really  know  why  they 
are  playing  golf  or  tennis  or  swimming  or  danc- 
ing. If  they  did,  some  of  them  would  be  surprised 
indeed.  To  give  an  example  of  the  way  "  A  sub- 
stitute shines  brightly  as  a  king  Until  a  king  be 
by,"  let  me  mention  the  extraordinary  value  placed 
by  the  lover  upon  the  possession  of  his  mistress' 
glove  or  handkerchief,  or  a  rose  that  she  has  worn, 
which  he  cherishes  up  to  the  point  of  fetichism, 
and  all  to  satisfy — and  for  a  time,  at  any  rate,  it 
does  satisfy — the  old  Titan  within  him,  as  a  repre- 
sentative of  the  adored  one,  retaining  a  vividness 
and  a  magnetism  for  him  which  make  him  some- 
times the  laughing-stock  of  those  not  in  his  excited 
condition. 

There  is,  then,  a  real  satisfaction,  conscious 
and  unconscious,  in  the  possession  of  the  token 


82     MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

above  mentioned.  I  do  not  mean  to  imply  for  a 
moment  that  it  will  or  should  continue  to  be  a  sat- 
isfaction of  the  right  kind,  but  it  makes  life  endur- 
able for  a  while. 

Then  there  is  the  sublimation  which  is  necessary 
for  the  lover  who,  through  the  death  or  unfaith- 
fulness of  the  inamorata,  is  obliged  to  give  up 
all  hope  of  ever  completely  possessing  her.  We 
know  that  it  can  be  done.  "  Men  have  died,  and 
worms  have  eaten  them,  but  not  for  love."  The 
intense  desire,  directed  by  chance  toward  one  of 
the  opposite  sex,  may  still  be  utilised  as  an  enor- 
mous power  for  the  attainment  of  an  end  which 
eventually  will  give  as  great  a  spiritual  satisfaction 
as  would  have  been  given  by  the  attainment  of  the 
end  first  proposed.  In  other  words,  it  has  been 
proved  over  and  over  that  humans  can  get  inter- 
ested in  anything,  especially  anything  human,  the 
only  requisite  being  the  same  as  that  for  the  love 
of  men  for  women  and  women  for  men;  that  is, 
a  complete  devotion  to  and  absorption  in  the  work 
that  they  are  doing,  to  the  utter  forgetfulness  of 
self. 

G.    Introversion 

An  ignorance  of  the  real  causes  of  our  acts 
from  hour  to  hour  may  result  in  our  not  being  able 
to  see  our  opportunities  in  the  line  of  social  co- 
operation. We  may  turn  more  and  more  away 


INTROVERSION  83 

from  relations  with  the  outer  world,  and  more  and 
more  become  preoccupied  with  what  we  conceive 
as  our  own  interests.  We  may  seek  our  satisfac- 
tions from  within  or  from  without. 

By  virtue  of  the  principle  of  ambivalence,  to  be 
discussed  in  a  later  chapter,  the  Unconscious  is 
susceptible  of  development  in  these  two  opposite 
directions.  It  may  develop  in  such  a  way  as  to 
appear  to  be  essentially  selfish,  or,  to  use  a  homely 
expression,  ingrowing.  It  may  frequently  tend  to 
turn  in  upon  itself,  to  feed  upon  itself  and  to  con- 
sume itself.  At  the  same  time,  however,  we  are 
to  remember  that,  as  a  source  of  almost  unlimited 
power,  it  still  has  the  ability,  if  not  obstructed  by 
one  or  another  factor  of  the  environment,  of  de- 
veloping outward  and  effecting  the  greater  part  of 
its  work  upon  the  outer  world.  The  cause  of  the 
introversion,  as  it  is  called,  or  the  tendency  to  turn 
in  upon  itself,  is  the  fact  that  for  a  very  important 
period  of  our  lives — that  is,  our  infancy — we 
absorb  more  influences  from  both  outer  and  inner 
world  than  at  any  other  time.  In  this  most  im- 
pressionable time  of  our  lives,  when  we  learn  more 
than  we  do  at  any  other  time,  we  are  almost  unable 
to  avoid  getting  the  greater,  by  far  the  greater, 
part  of  our  satisfactions  from  our  own  persons. 
The  nursing  infant  hardly  distinguishes  any  world 
outside  of  itself;  and  that,  as  we  know,  is  composed 
largely  of  absorbing  liquid  nourishment,  playing 


84    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

with  its  toes  and  other  parts  of  its  body,  and  filling 
the  air  with  its  own  inarticulate  but  vociferous  pro- 
testations. Satisfaction  from  effecting  changes 
upon  external  reality,  silently  and  with  its  hands, 
it,  of  course,  knows  nothing  about.  And  yet,  when 
we  look  at  the  ordinary  actions  of  many  of  our 
acquaintances  of  maturer  years,  how  much  better 
do  they  do  than  the  infant?  The  nourishment  is 
changed,  with  the  advent  of  teeth,  from  entirely 
liquid  to  partly  solid,  the  playing  with  its  toes  goes 
on,  figuratively,  as  a  great  part  of  human  activity 
is  really  not  much  more  useful  than  that  for  the  ad- 
vancement, material  and  spiritual,  of  society;  and 
as  for  the  filling  of  the  air  with  inarticulate  but  vo- 
ciferous protestations,  what  is  the  major  portion 
of  ordinary  adult  (so-called)  conversation,  small 
talk,  but  a  voicing  of  one's  own  opinions,  without 
any  more  regard  than  the  infant  as  to  whether 
those  opinions  are  interesting  to,  not  to  say  effect 
any  change  in,  the  world  of  reality  outside  of 
them? 

Most  conversation,  when  between  two  persons, 
consists  in  one  person  talking  to  himself  in  the 
hearing  of  the  other  person  and  vice  versa.  When 
among  three  or  more  persons  it  is  the  same  thing, 
only  multiplied.  A  voices  his  own  opinions  or 
gives  utterance  to  a  train  of  thought  that  gen- 
erally has  no  reference  to  B,  and  if  B  gets  a 
chance,  which  he  may  when  A's  verification  is 


PLEASURE-PAIN  VS.  REALITY      85 

exhausted,  he  goes  ahead  and  does  the  same  thing. 
Rarely  does  either  of  them  take  any  interest  in 
the  shade  of  difference  of  personality  between  him- 
self and  the  other.  Only  those  who  are  intuitively 
able  to  take  some  small  steps  in  the  study  of  the 
Unconscious  succeed  in  really  conversing,  which, 
according  to  derivation,  should  mean  a  convert- 
ing of  the  thoughts  of  the  one  into  a  form  compre- 
hensible to  the  other  and  vice  versa.  But  rarely 
are  the  one  person's  thoughts  entertained  by  the 
other  for  any  purpose  whatever  except  pure  nega- 
tion, contradiction  being  the  easiest  treatment  of 
any  presented  theme,  consisting,  as  it  does,  of  a 
merely  parrot-like  repetition  of  ideas,  but  with  the 
parrot-like  or  inhuman  quality  of  the  negative. 
Elsewhere,  page  60,  I  refer  to  the  essential  iden- 
tity of  any  idea  and  its  negative.  It  may,  indeed, 
be  said  that  an  idea  has  no  negative,  except  pos- 
sibly that  the  negative  of  an  idea  is  but  a  mental 
blank,  nothing  at  all. 

H.    Pleasure-Pain  versus  Reality 

Considerable  illumination  comes  to  us  if  we 
regard  the  causes  of  our  individual  actions  as  de- 
termined on  the  one  hand  by  a  wish  for  or  a  disin- 
clination from  the  pleasure  or  pain  connected  with 
such  actions,  or,  on  the  other  hand,  by  a  wish  to 
produce  an  effect  on  the  outside  world  by  these 
actions. 


86    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

In  these  considerations  of  reality  and  the  atti- 
tude toward  reality  which  is  required  by  the  fully 
developed  adult  psyche,  it  is  necessary  to  bear  in 
mind  that  the  natural  tendency  of  the  psyche  up 
to  the  time  of  real  adulthood  is  to  regard  the  value 
of  all  things  and  experiences  in  accordance  with 
the  degree  of  pleasure  or  pain  which  they  produce 
in  the  psyche,  and  as  pleasure  and  pain  are  pro- 
duced only  in  the  psyche,  or  in  other  words  are 
absolutely  subjective  and  are  not  qualities  inher- 
ent in  real  things  belonging  to  the  outer  world, 
we  have  here  a  standard  by  which  to  test  all  ex- 
periences. This  is  called  the  principle  of  pleasure- 
pain  versus  reality.  If  an  effort  is  made  which  has 
for  its  aim  the  production  of  pleasure  alone  or  the 
avoidance  of  pain  only,  it  is  instigated  merely  from 
the  archaic  Unconscious  level.  If  it  has  an  ele- 
ment in  it  of  doing  better  work  by  means  of  doing 
it  under  pleasurable  rather  than  painful  circum- 
stances, it  is  to  be  approved  only  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  work  actually  done  and  is  so  far  re- 
moved from  simple  infantility.  If  the  work  is 
such  that  it  is  completed  irrespective  of  the  pleas- 
ure or  pain  it  may  entail,  but  only  with  a  view  to 
its  productiveness  from  the  social  standpoint, 
then  it  is  completely  removed  from  infantility 
and  is  directed  according  to  the  principle  of 
reality. 

The  mark  of  the  completely  socialised  human 


PLEASURE-PAIN  VS.  REALITY      87 

adult  is  a  separation  from  self,  or  from  the  effort- 
less consuming  of  self,  and  an  effective  or  outwork- 
ing activity  upon  things  recognised  as  not  self, 
viz.,  the  world  of  reality.  The  world  of  reality 
consists  of  those  things  which  we  cannot  always 
control,  but  with  which  we  are  continually  experi- 
menting, to  see  if  we  can  control  them.  If  we  can 
control  them,  we  expand  our  Self  by  the  measure 
of  everything  over  which  we  exercise  control.  If 
we  build  a  house  or  organise  a  club,  or  cover  a 
window  with  mosquito  netting  or  even  hammer  in 
a  single  tack  where  it  ought  to  be,  and  was  not, 
we  a,re  by  so  much  expanding  our  Self.  The  ex- 
pending of  effort  is  the  expanding  of  Ego.  If, 
on  the  other  hand,  we  sit  down  and  imagine  what 
we  should  like  to  do,  and  know  at  the  same  time 
that  we  never  shall  do  it,  we  are  in  the  condition  of 
the  infant  playing  with  itself.  It  has  no  control 
over  the  world ;  it  gets  all  its  joy  out  of  itself.  But 
the  individual  who  recognises  the  difference  be- 
tween himself  and  the  outer  world  (and  very  few 
realise  the  import  of  that  difference),  and  recog- 
nises that  his  own  growth  and  expansion  depend 
on  his  manipulation,  not  of  himself,  but  of  that 
outside  world,  will,  with  an  ever  increasing  inter- 
est, try  and  prove  and  try  again  in  an  effort  to  see 
how  much  of  his  environment  he  can  shape  to  his 
ideas.  For  those  of  us  who  are  in  the  powerful 
grip  of  the  Unconscious  the  difference  between 


ourselves  and  the  outside  world  of  reality  is  diffi- 
cult or  impossible  to  realise,  for  the  reason  that  It 
constantly  plays  upon  us  a  trick  which  only  a 
few  have  been  able  to  beat  It  at.  This  trick  con- 
sists in  causing  us,  by  virtue  of  the  strong  colour  of 
Self  that  we  are  invested  with,  to  think  that  what 
we  see  is  what  we  want  to  see.  This  propensity 
is  called  by  It  the  genial  quality  of  seeing  the 
best  in  things,  of  making  the  best  out  of  things — 
a  phrase  that,  like  reality  in  the  hands  of  the  Un- 
conscious, is  subject  to.  much  twisting.  If  things 
go  dead  wrong,  of  course,  as  the  motto  says,  we 
ought  to  smile;  but  it  means  a  lot  more.  Some 
people  take  it  to  mean  that  we  should  be  satis- 
fied with  what  has  been  allotted  to  us  by  Fate, 
accept  without  a  struggle  what  she  has  given  us 
and  smile,  probably  at  her,  to  see  if  we  cannot  in- 
duce her  to  give  more.  Other  people  take  it  to 
mean  that  we  should  spare  them  the  pain  which 
our  outcry  might  occasion  them. 

I.     Regression 

The  metaphor  of  Fate,  just  now  used  with  the 
feminine  pronoun,  suggests  a  corollary  of  the  in- 
fantility of  the  Unconscious.  I  have  mentioned 
its  childish  or  archaic  character,  childish  because  it 
seeks  its  satisfactions  out  of  (from)  itself  as  an  in- 
fant does,  being  powerless  to  move  the  external 


REGRESSION  89 

world  or  any  part  of  it,  and  archaic  because  it  has 
been  so  and  done  so  for  many  hundreds  of  thou- 
sands of  years.  This  characteristic  of  the  Uncon- 
scious which  is  shown  in  its  tendency  to  go 
backward  to  stages  of  development  which  were  the 
highest  point  reached  ages  ago  in  the  evolution 
of  the  human  mind  is  called  Regression.  Re- 
gression is  toward  an  infantile  state,  and  the  im- 
plication inherent  in  this  term  is  its  relative  term, 
mother. 

The  Unconscious  behaves  as  if  it  wanted  to  be 
a  child  and  to  return  to,  and  get  things  out  of 
(from),  its  mother.  Thus  the  man  submits  to 
Fate  or  to  Fortune,  as  a  child  submits  to  its 
mother,  and  he  looks  to  Fortune  for  favours  as 
the  infant  looks  to  its  mother  for  sustenance. 
This  is  the  attitude  of  all  gamblers,  of  spec- 
ulators of  all  kinds,  and  other  people  who, 
like  Mr.  Micawber,  are  looking  for  things 
to  "  turn  up."  This  attitude  to  the  world, 
similar  to  the  attitude  of  the  child  toward  its 
mother,  is  a  widespread  characteristic  of  men  and 
women.  In  other  words,  the  infantile  Uncon- 
scious, constituting  by  far  the  greater  part  of  our 
total  self,  and  controlling  by  far  the  greater  part 
of  our  actions,  makes  us  behave  in  a  multitude  of 
relations  with  the  world  not  even  like  grown-up 
children,  but  like  children  not  grown  up,  and  to 
act  toward  the  world  as  a  child  does  toward  its 


90    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

mother,  receiving  favours  with  great  expectations 
and  small  thanks,  and  attempting  to  reject  rebuffs 
with  loud  waitings  more  like  the  vociferated  prot- 
estations previously  mentioned.  All  this  the 
Unconscious  makes  us  do  without  realising  it  our- 
selves. Of  the  figure  we  are  cutting  we  are  our- 
selves unconscious.  And  we  are  unconscious  of 
it  for  the  same  reason  that  the  clown  in  Hamlet 
gave  for  Hamlet's  madness  not  being  seen  in  him 
in  England:  "  There  they  are  all  as  mad  as  he." 

J.    Universality  of  Manifestation 

The  physical  sciences  teach  us  that  no  motion 
of  any  material  body  is  without  a  cause,  that  the 
effect  is  always  measurably  equal  to  the  cause,  that 
no  atom  is  ever  destroyed  and  that  no  energy  is 
ever  lost.  Analytical  psychology  is  differentiated 
from  other  mental  science  in  making  the  same 
statement  about  psychical  phenomena, namely,  that 
all  motions  of  our  bodies  are  invariably  the  effects 
of  physical  causes  within  or  without  our  bodies, 
that  these  causes  within  our  bodies  are  conditions 
either  physical  or  mental,  and  furthermore  that  all 
mental  manifestations  whatever  are  quite  as  much 
subject  to  the  law  of  causation  as  are  the  purely 
physical  phenomena.  The  billiard  ball  was  set  in 
motion  by  my  cue,  the  cue  by  my  arm,  my  arm  by 
my  mind.  All,  including  the  mental  action  of  aim- 


UNIVERSALITY  91 

ing  at  the  other  ball  and  willing  the  motion  of  my 
arm,  are  equally  determined  by  the  same  law  of 
causation.  Not  only  that,  but  every  association 
of  ideas  that  could  possibly  occur  to  me  is  the  in- 
evitable result  of  causes  that  have  been  operative 
always.  It  needs  but  a  slight  exercise  of  the  im- 
agination to  conceive  that  if  a  person  were  able  to 
trace  back  the  causes  of  every  act  of  our  life,  he 
could  tell  exactly  why  we  had  done  any  action. 
This  would  fill  with  meaning  every  expression  of 
countenance  of  every  face  he  saw,  and  enable  him 
to  know  by  anyone's  actions  exactly  what  he  was 
thinking.  The  slightest  movement  of  a  finger 
would  be  to  him  indicative  of  the  whole  character, 
for  it  is  evident  that  having  a  certain  mental  or 
moral  character  a  man  cannot  help  revealing  it  by 
every  motion  of  his  body.  Freud  says  that  mortals 
can  hide  no  secret,  and  that  whoever  is  silent  with 
the  lips  tattles  with  the  finger  tips,  betrayal  oozing 
out  of  every  pore. 

Thus  have  we  forever  continued  to  express  our 
intimate  thoughts  in  everything  we  do,  and  have 
as  continually  refrained  from  reading  each  other's 
natures  thus  exposed.  And  the  strangeness,  the 
ridiculousness  of  the  whole  proceeding  still  con- 
tinues. All  but  the  smallest  fraction  of  us  abso- 
lutely unconscious  (that  is,  unknown  to  ourselves) , 
and  yet  to  anyone  else  perfectly  legible  in  every- 
thing we  do — legible  but  forever  unread,  un- 


92    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

thought  about  and  not  acted  on !  But  now  at  last 
in  the  analytic  form  of  psychology  we  have  not 
only  the  gift  to  "  see  oursels  as  ithers  see  us," 
but  to  see  ourselves  as  no  one  of  us  has  ever  before 
seen  another. 

If  we  were  suddenly  given  an  insight  into  the 
motives  governing  the  actions  of  the  people 
around  us,  it  would  at  once  give  us  a  clear  under- 
standing of  what  their  words  really  meant.  If,  on 
the  other  hand,  some  device  could  be  invented 
which  would  translate  every  utterance  of  our 
fellows  into  truth,  regardless  of  what  degree  of 
prevarication  was  intended,  we  should  have  but 
a  perfected  variety  of  the  present  analytic  psy- 
chology. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE   UNCONSCIOUS    (DYNAMIC) 

THE  previous  chapter  has  been  largely  devoted  to 
a  description  of  certain  phases  of  the  Unconscious. 
We  have  now  to  examine  some  of  its  workings  as 
dynamic,  and  to  emphasise  the  continual  trickery 
which  it  practises  upon  us,  as  well  as  the  way  in 
which  it  sometimes  helps  us  to  do  our  work  better, 
as  we  learn  more  and  more  to  sublimate  the  con- 
tinuous and  never  completely  satisfied  craving. 
And  first  of  all  we  should  realise  that  the  craving 
changes  the  appearance  of  reality. 

A.    Craving  or  Reality? 

We  can  conceive  of  a  person  with  an  imagina- 
tion so  strong  as  to  change  the  greater  part  of 
external  reality  from  what  it  is  to  what  he  im- 
agines it  is.  A  child  playing  with  a  few  sticks  and 
stones  makes  of  them,  in  his  imagination,  boats 
and  docks  or  people  and  houses.  Similarly  the 
insane  person  thinks  one  or  another  of  his  com- 
panions to  be  his  mother,  his  wife,  his  enemy  or 
anyone  else.  The  insane  are  children,  and  chil- 

93 


94    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

dren  are  expected  to  be  at  least  a  little  foolish. 
The  difference  is  only  in  what  society  has  a  right 
to  expect  of  them.  When  we  are  more  civilised  I 
think  that  perhaps  more  will  be  expected  of  chil- 
dren in  the  way  of  productive  work  than  is  now 
except  in  agricultural  districts.  In  schools,  even, 
they  are  sometimes  required  to  make  things  that 
really  add  to  the  wealth  of  the  nation  in  a  small 
way. 

Like  the  child  playing  with  sticks  and  stones 
and  water,  and  taking  out  of  himself  the  difference 
between  the  reality  and  his  desires,  a  great  many 
adults  are  accomplishing  a  little  and  are  getting 
their  satisfaction  out  of  their  own  imagining  that 
their  accomplishments  are  greater  than  they  really 
are.  It  is  easier  to  imagine  that  a  piece  of  work 
is  satisfactory  to  ourselves  and  to  other  people 
than  it  is  to  do  it  again  and  again  until  we  have 
proved  by  every  means  in  our  power  that  we  could 
not  do  it  better.  Since  childhood  we  have  prac- 
tised ourselves,  not  in  performance,  but  in  pulling 
the  wool  over  our  own  desires.  The  contrast  be- 
tween the  world  of  our  wishes  and  the  world  of 
reality  is  ever  before  our  eyes.  Where  we  do  not 
see  it  is  just  where  we  have  accustomed  ourselves 
to  be  satisfied  with  the  less,  rather  than  with  the 
greater  accomplishment.  The  infantility  of  our 
present  civilisation,  much  as  it  may  have  invented 
and  built  and  produced,  constantly  forms  a  bar- 


CRAVING  OR  REALITY?  95 

rier  against  further  progress.  If  we  devote  our 
days  and  our  nights  to  toil,  our  acquaintances  call 
us  unsocial,  and  unsocial  we  are,  to  be  sure,  in  a 
certain  narrow  sense.  If  sociability  is  demanded 
of  us,  consisting  in  a  playing  of  games,  and  eating 
of  feasts,  and  in  driving  of  motor-cars  and  boast- 
ing how  fast  and  how  far  we  have  driven  them, 
then  sociability  is  no  virtue.  Here  again  our  Un- 
conscious is  deceiving  us.  The  contrast  between 
our  wishes  and  our  reality  is  again  obscured  in  the 
same  way  as  it  is  in  the  case  of  the  children  with 
their  sticks  and  stones.  We  do  not  see  the  dis- 
crepancy between  what  we  have  and  what  we  wish. 
With  a  childish  complacency  we  take  what  we  have 
for  what  we  desire,  because  our  desires  are  so 
strong  that  they  would  make  it  seem  that  we  simply 
could  not  stand  disappointment,  and  the  only  way 
not  to  be  disappointed  in  the  majority  of  the  sit- 
uations in  which  we  find  ourselves  is  to  wrench 
the  truth  to  fit  our  desires.  Most  of  us  actually 
accomplish  this  terrific  twist  of  the  lenses  through 
which  we  see  life,  and  fancy  that  we  cause  a  thing 
to  be  so  merely  by  believing  it  to  be  so.  This  is  on 
the  supposition  of  the  intolerability  of  the  idea  of 
being  disappointed  in  any  of  our  desires,  a  sup- 
position that  gains  support  from  all  the  intimate 
study  of  the  human  soul  made  in  more  recent 
times.  And  the  significant  point  about  the  intol- 
erability of  an  idea  is  the  fact  that  this  quality  of  it 


96    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

is  exactly  what  causes  the  idea  to  be  repressed  and 
to  be  forced  to  maintain  an  existence  of  its  own 
apart  from  our  conscious  lives,  and  yet,  as  will 
be  shown  later,  to  be  closely  connected  with  our 
conscious  lives  and  to  appear  in  them  daily,  hourly, 
but  in  forms  that  we  do  not  recognise  and  can 
recognise  only  with  the  aid  of  psychoanalysis.  If 
only  we  were  all  strong  enough  to  stand  any  dis- 
appointment, any  rebuff,  we  never  should  have  any 
troubles  either  physical  or  mental.  There's  the 
rub !  The  truth  is  that  we  are  all  stronger,  men- 
tally and  physically,  than  we  think  we  are,  and 
here  again  our  Unconscious  is  deceiving  us.* 
We  have  all  heard  that  it  is  not  overwork 
that  kills,  but  worry.  But  worry  is  only  the  fear 
that  we  are  going  to  break  down.  "  Cowards 
die  many  times  before  their  deaths.  The  valiant 
only  taste  of  death  but  once."  Children  do  not  so 
soon  get  tired  of  play,  because  in  play  they  and 
their  Unconscious  are  united,  there  are  no  com- 
plexes or  conflicts  (of  the  mental  variety),  and  so 
no  obstructions  in  their  activities.  They  "  get 
tired  "  when  it  comes  to  some  lessons,  and  for  the 
reason  that  in  them  they  are  not  united  with  them- 
selves. 

The  trick  above  referred  to,  that  the  Uncon- 
scious plays  upon  us  all  more  or  less,  is  that  of 

*"The  Unconscious  has  an  extremely  subtle  skill  in  shaping 
humans  according  to  its  desires." — Pfister,  /.  c.t  p.  98. 


CRAVING  OR  REALITY?  97 

making  us  think  that  our  desires  are  being  realised, 
when  they  are  only  partly  realised  or  not  at  all.  It 
is  somewhat  as  if  one  wished  that  all  the  earth 
were  blue  like  the  sky,  and  put  on  a  pair  of  blue 
glasses  in  order  to  change  it  into  blue.  To  make 
this  concept  more  vivid  I  need  only  refer  to  a 
form  of  insanity  in  which  the  afflicted  person  im- 
agines that  he  is  Napoleon  or  Jehovah,  or  to  any 
other  form  of  megalomania,  and  to  repeat  what 
I  have  said  on  page  73,  about  the  line  of  demar- 
kation  between  sanity  and  insanity.  To  the  extent 
that  we  are  all  controlled  by  the  Unconscious,  we 
are  all  of  us  megalo-  or  any  other  kind  of  maniacs 
in  greater  or  less  degree,  for  the  simple  and  sole 
reason  that  we  allow  our  desires  to  colour  our  per- 
ceptions. It  has  long  been  recognised  by  psychol- 
ogists that  our  former  sensations  affected  our  later 
perceptions,  but  the  important  part  played  by  our 
wishes  was  almost  entirely  overlooked.  We  are 
what  we  are  because  of  our  wishes.  Had  our 
wish  to  be  other  than  we  are  been  a  stronger  one 
we  should  have  been  other.  A  Rip  Van  Winkle  is 
a  drink-wrecked  wretch  because  he  has  gratified 
the  imbibing  wish  from  his  infancy,  and  really  pre- 
ferred, like  Omar  Khayyam,  to  take  the  cash  and 
let  the  credit  go.  The  same  may  be  asserted 
of  all  men,  successful  and  unsuccessful  alike. 
They  wish  to  be  what  they  are,  the  unsuccessful 
at  the  same  time  wishing  to  bemoan  their  fate  with 


98     MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

vociferous  protestations.  They  are  not  obliged 
to.  But  they  get  positive  pleasure  at  the  infant- 
wailing  level,  a  pleasure  quite  analogous  to  the 
boasting  of  the  successful  man. 

B.    Where  Do  Thoughts  Come  From? 

Nowhere  do  we  realise  more  keenly  that  the 
real  motives  of  our  everyday  acts  are  hidden  from 
us  than  in  the  inquiry  as  to  the  origin  of  the  im- 
pulse to  do  any  given  thing.  Even  in  the  matter 
of  sense  perception  we  frequently  notice  after- 
ward that  we  have  not  seen  what  was  before  our 
eyes,  and  have  seen  what  was  not  there.  A  simple 
and  concrete  example  of  this  is  the  infrequency  of 
our  seeing  misprints.  An  inverted  letter  in  a  word 
is  seldom  noticed,  an  omitted  letter  is  supplied  by 
the  mind,  a  superfluous  letter  is  ignored.  We  see 
only  what  is  in  our  minds,  was  the  old  form  of 
expression,  but  a  newer  one  and  a  better  would  be 
to  say  that  we  see,  hear  and  feel  only  what  is  in 
our  hearts,  that  is,  in  our  desires.  A  most  con- 
vincing method  of  showing  that  is  to  point  out 
that  the  mere  occurrence  of  an  idea  to  a  person 
is  a  proof  that  that  idea  and  no  other  was  the  idea 
wished  for  by  the  Unconscious.  For  instance,  I 
am  handed  a  letter  by  the  postman,  and  see  on  it 
the  handwriting  of  someone  who  owes  me  some 
money.  My  first  thought  is  that  he  may  be  send- 


WHENCE  COME  THOUGHTS?      99 

ing  me  a  check  to  cover  his  indebtedness.  I  may 
express  that  thought  in  the  cynical  form  of  there 
being  no  such  luck  as  that  this  fellow  should  pay 
his  debts  so  soon.  But  be  advised  that  no  wish  is 
itself  negative  in  its  matter.  It  may  be  couched  in 
a  negative  form,  suggested  by  the  desire  of  the 
Titan  to  be  powerful  in  the  way  of  deep  knowl- 
edge of  the  world.  But  the  wish  for  the  money  is 
there  in  its  positive  shape,  just  the  same,  whether 
it  is  expressed  affirmatively  or  negatively.  I  tear 
open  the  envelope  and  I  read  that  the1  wretch  is 
going  to  be  married  to  a  girl  whom  I  know  quite 
well  and  think  very  highly  of.  There  was  no 
chance  that  this  idea  should  ever  have  come  into 
my  mind ! 

It  is  almost  impossible  to  tell,  of  any  experience, 
how  much  and  what  is  contributed  to  the  total  im- 
pression by  the  outside  world  and  what  by  the  in- 
ner world  of  thought.  In  a  street  accident  where 
a  horse  knocks  down  and  runs  over  a  man,  one 
observer  is  horrified  to  see  the  horse  step  right  on 
the  man's  chest  and  thinks  that  the  weight  that  a 
horse  puts  on  his  right  forefoot  is  enough  to  crush 
the  man's  chest  and  perhaps  kill  him  instantly. 
It  appears  that  a  large  proportion  of  the  horror 
of  that  occasion  was  contributed  by  the  horrified 
observer,  as  the  man  in  question  to  the  surprise  of 
the  onlooker,  not  to  say  to  his  disappointment, 
immediately  jumped  up  and  walked  off.  The  wit- 


ioo    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

ness  never  knew  whether  the  horse  had  really 
stepped  on  the  man  or  not.  The  witness  was  quite 
sure,  however,  of  his  own  unpleasant  sensations. 
Now,  must  it  be  said  that  the  witness  desired  to 
see  injury  done  to  the  man?  If  what  I  have  said 
about  our  seeing  what  is  in  our  hearts  is  true  we 
must  say  that.  Not  that  the  witness  had  any 
grudge  against  the  man,  either,  for  he  was  a  total 
stranger.  But  why  in  a  city  does  a  crowd  imme- 
diately collect  around  any  accident?  Do  all  the 
people  that  run  to  see  what  is  at  the  centre  of  a 
street  crowd  think  that  they  can  be  of  service? 
We  are  obliged  to  acknowledge  that  there  is  a 
desire  for  excitement  in  all  of  us,  which  is  satis- 
fied by  the  sight  of  any  unusual  occurrence,  even 
if  it  be  a  disaster.  Psychoanalysis,  as  will  be 
shown  later,  believes  that  all  excitement  is  sexual 
in  its  nature,  fundamentally. 

Another  instance.  Suppose  that  Willie  wants 
to  go  fishing  down  the  bay  in  a  rowboat  with  a 
couple  of  other  boys  about  his  age.  What  is 
Mother's  first  idea?  "Oh,  I'm  afraid  that  he 
might  get  drowned!  "  What  put  that  idea  into 
her  head?  The  Unconscious.  What  would  It 
lose  if  Willie  got  drowned?  Nothing;  It  would 
go  on  wishing  for  more  excitement;  It  would  reap 
the  intense  feelings  of  a  nine-days'  talk.  It  sent 
up  that  idea  into  Mother's  head  from  the  depths 
where  It  has  been  squirming  for  aeons.  But  the 


WHENCE  COME  THOUGHTS?    101 

thought  was  most  natural.  Boys  do  get  into  such 
trouble.  One  reads  of  it  in  the  papers  every  day. 
Yes,  to  be  sure,  madam,  but  the  proportion  of 
boys  that  are  drowned  is  very  small  indeed  com- 
pared with  the  number  who  go  fishing.  There  is 
also  another  practical  point  of  view  in  this  con- 
nection, f  Everything  that  Willie  does  apart  from 
his  mother  makes  him  independent  of  her,  and 
brings  nearer  a  separation  which  can  do  only  good 
to  him,  but  which  most  mothers  think  is  undesir- 
able for  themselves.  The  plain  fact,  which  the 
mother's  Unconscious  blinds  her  to,  is  that  her 
own  importance,  her  own  size  in  Willie's  world, 
so  to  speak,  is  greatly  enlarged  by  any  mishap 
that  can  occur  to  him.  ylf  he  only  gets  a  fish- 
hook in  his  foot,  he  ana  she  both  go  backwards, 
maybe  several  years,  to  the  time  when  he  was 
wholly  dependent  on  her  for  life  and  sustenance, 
and  they  both  regress,  as  the  expression  is, 
to  the  mother-infant  condition,  for  the  time 
being.  Such  temporary  regressions  are  common 
enough  in  everyone's  life.  But  the  point  is  that 
mothers  ought  not  to  worry.  Perhaps  they  would 
worry  less  if  they  knew  that  all  worry  is  fear  and 
that  all  fear  is  desire,  even  though  it  be  expressed 
in  a  negative  form.  But  we  must  return  to  the 
tricks  of  the  Unconscious,  and  in  particular  to  the 
extremely  common  trick  it  has  of  supplying  us  with 
our  ideas,  especially  fears,  or  other  apprehensions. 


UNP>  (FOB] 

.0  A  MT  A     It  A  Titt  ARA 


io2   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

I  once  knew  a  man  who  was  left  a  fortune  by 
an  uncle.  It  was  left  in  trust,  the  income  of  it  to 
be  used  by  the  widow  until  her  death.  At  that 
time  her  expectation  of  life  was  twelve  years,  but 
the  wish  for  the  money  made  the  expectant  inheri- 
tor turn,  every  morning  from  that  time  on  for  sev- 
eral years,  to  the  column  of  the  newspaper  that 
contained  the  death  notices,  and  look  for  the 
name  of  his  uncle's  widow.  I  am  wondering  how 
many  hours  of  his  life  he  has  wasted  in  that  ig- 
noble search.  He  might  have  done  quite  a  bit  for 
science  in  that  time,  or  earned  some  of  the  money 
that  he  is  still  waiting  for.  But  he,  like  so  many 
others,  was  at  those  times,  as  well  as  at  most  other 
times,  in  the  grip  of  his  Unconscious,  which  di- 
verted him,  as  it  daily  diverts  the  majority  of  us, 
from  the  path  of  greatest  ultimate  satisfaction  to 
us  to  a  regressive  path  on  which  we  amble,  led  on 
placidly  by  blind  desire,  without  the  least  thought 
of  whether  it  is  the  best  or  the  worst  desire. 

All  these  are  tricks  of  the  Unconscious  to  lull 
us  backward  to  the  condition  of  the  prenatal  sleep. 
It  seems  that  only  a  few  of  us  have  the  natural 
faculty  of  rousing  ourselves  to  continuous  useful 
activity  without  inspiration  or  instigation  from 
outside.  But  it  is  at  least  interesting  to  know  that 
if  the  Unconscious  is  reached  and  affected  from 
without,  the  awakening  may  take  place. 

In  Chapter  X  we  shall  mention  some  of  the 


WHENCE  COME  THOUGHTS?    103 

manifestations  of  the  Unconscious  in  everyday  life, 
but  here,  while  on  the  topic  of  the  continual  trick- 
ery of  the  Unconscious  by  which  it  influences  our 
actions,  I  must  say  one  word  more  about  how  hard 
it  is  to  detect  oneself  in  time  in  the  very  act  of  re- 
laxing control  over  the  Unconscious.  As  we  pro- 
ceed with  our  daily  occupations,  our  attention  is 
for  the  moment  deflected  from  the  thing  we  hap- 
pen to  be  doing  toward  something  else  not  in  the 
same  line  of  thought  and  not  leading  to  the  same 
goal.  Is  this  a  social  or  an  asocial  deflection 
of  attention?  That  depends  almost  always  on 
whether  the  source  of  the  interruption  is  external 
or  internal.  If  we  are  working  at  some  task  and 
a  caller  comes  in,  or  some  question  has  to  be  de- 
cided, which  has  come  up  unexpectedly  at  that 
time,  it  is  of  course  possible  that  we  should  be  act- 
ing in  an  asocial  manner  if  we  went  on  with  our 
work,  and  did  not  first  respond  to  the  call,  but  if 
on  the  other  hand  a  thought  occurred  to  us  and 
we  did  not  make  a  memorandum  of  it  as  briefly  as 
possible  and  immediately  go  on  with  our  work,  we 
should  not  be  acting  in  a  way  that  would  lead  to 
the  best  results  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  social 
organisation,  which  requires  us  to  make  the  best 
possible  use  of  every  minute  of  our  time.  The 
head  of  a  big  business,  and  the  heads  of  many 
departments  of  business  more  or  less  great,  care- 
fully shield  themselves,  by  means  of  secretaries, 


io4   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

telephone  operators  and  pages,  from  anything  that 
will  unnecessarily  divert  their  attention  from  the 
work  in  hand.  So  should  our  craving  be  kept 
shielded  from  deflection,  for  in  the  deflection  of 
the  organic  craving  it  is  not  the  whole  that  is 
changed  but  only  a  small  part  of  it.  If  the  di- 
rection of  the  entire  craving  were  changed,  we 
should  still  have  a  united  psyche,  but  with  its  cur- 
rent all  flowing  in  a  direction  which  might  not  be 
the  best  one  for  the  co-workers  in  the  evolution  of 
society.  For  instance,  it  probably  takes  all  of  the 
combined  craving  of  an  individual  psyche  to  coun- 
teract the  restrictive  suggestions  of  society  to  so 
great  an  extent  as  to  allow  the  man  to  commit  a 
murder  of  the  first  degree.  This  psyche,  however, 
has  for  the  time  being  had  its  craving  all  united 
toward  one  goal. 

To  take  an  illustration  less  sensational :  A  man 
was  going  to  pay  a  bill  at  a  store  next  door  to  a 
drug  store.  As  he  was  about  to  pass  the  drug 
store  a  large  automobile  glided  up  to  it  and  a 
beautiful  young  woman  stepped  out  and  walked 
into  the  drug  store.  It  is  not  hard  to  conceive  of 
what  the  man  was  thinking  when,  in  a  moment  of 
forgetfulness,  he  went  into  the  drug  store  and 
offered  to  the  cashier  his  check  in  payment  of  the 
bill  that  he  had  incurred  at  the  next  store  (which 
sold  paints  and  oils) .  His  Unconscious,  following 
the  archaic  trends  of  its  infantile  constitution, 


WHENCE  COME  THOUGHTS?    105 

craved  to  look  at  the  beauty  who  had  come  out  of 
the  automobile,  and  so  far  overcame  the  conscious 
purpose  of  the  man  that  it  made  him  follow  the 
young  woman,  but  without  the  slightest  show  of 
impoliteness.  For  a  brief  time  it  simply  abolished 
all  thought  of  the  errand  which  he  was  on  and  de- 
flected his  actual  path  from  one  store  and  made 
him  go  into  another.  He  did  not  regain  his  full 
consciousness  until  he  stood  before  the  cashier  and 
realised  that  it  was  not  there  that  he  owed  the 
money.  Thus  does  the  Unconscious  take  hold  and 
steer  us  sometimes  into  situations  that  we  find 
somewhat  embarrassing.  This  incident  shows  us 
the  Unconscious  in  complete  control  of  a  man's 
actions  for  a  brief  time  and  the  rapid  awakening, 
as  it  might  be  called,  to  his  conscious  purpose. 

How  the  Unconscious  controls  the  nature  of  the 
ideas  that  seem  to  occur  to  us  when  we  suddenly 
and  without  apparent  reason  merely  happen  to 
think  of  something,  may  be  illustrated  by  the  fol- 
lowing examples.  It  is  a  familiar  experience  to 
all  of  us  to  find  ourselves  thinking  of  something, 
to  wonder  how  we  happened  to  be  thinking  of  that 
particular  thing,  and  then  to  be  able  to  trace  back 
the  associations  of  ideas  through  several  steps  un- 
til we  are  satisfied  that  we  have  found  the  orig- 
inal thought  that  started  the  whole  train  of  ideas, 
the  noteworthy  feature  of  which  strikes  us  as 
being  the  remoteness  of  the  last  idea  from  the  first. 


io6   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

We  rarely  or  never  try  to  think  where  the  orig- 
inal idea  came  from.  We  always  find,  however,  if 
we  take  the  trouble  to  devote  some  thought  to  the 
matter,  that  the  original  idea  is  the  expression  of 
a  desire  on  our  part.  In  other  words,  the  first 
idea,  apparently  not  associated  with  anything  at  all 
that  we  may  have  been  thinking  of  at  the  time,  has 
been  supplied  by  the  Unconscious.  It  is  a  remark- 
able fact,  too,  that  not  only  the  first  idea  in  the 
series,  but  also  all  the  others,  which  seem  so  nat- 
urally associated  with  each  other,  have  been  sup- 
plied in  the  same  way.  When  we  think  right 
along  naturally  without  any  restraint,  or  repres- 
sion, as  we  now  call  it,  and  the  ideas  flow  in  easily 
without  any  obstructions,  we  may  safely  say  that 
the  smoother  the  flow  of  thoughts  the  more  sub- 
ject they  are  to  the  dictation  of  the  Unconscious. 
Every  idea  is  associated  according  to  Its  logic, 
with  the  wishes  which  It  is  formulating  for  Itself 
at  the  time.  We  may  think  we  can  control  our 
thought,  but  it  is  quite  manifest  that  if  two  people 
start  with,  for  instance,  the  thought  "  hotel "  the 
next  thought  may  be  "  dance  "  for  one  of  them 
and  "  hops  "  for  the  other,  and  the  next  may  take 
them  still  farther  apart,  as  from  "  dance  "  the  lady 
might  get  "  Fred,"  while  from  "  hops  "  the  gentle- 
man might  next  turn  his  thought  (or  his  Uncon- 
scious might,  for  him)  to  beer.  At  any  rate,  the 
experience  is  common  enough  and  it  shows  with- 


RESISTANCES  107 

out  doubt  that  our  ideas,  apparently  flowing  as 
they  will,  and  quite  accidentally,  are  yet  subject 
to  the  control  of  the  Unconscious,  and  its  selective 
action  is  plainly  shown  in  cases  like  this  one. 

In  contrast  to  the  free  flowing  of  ideas  as  in  the 
examples  cited,  we  sometimes  experience  a  stop- 
page in  our  flow  of  thoughts,  the  most  familiar  ex- 
ample of  which  is  from  embarrassment  of  one  kind 
or  another,  as,  for  instance,  when  an  inexperienced 
speaker  is  forced  by  circumstances  to  address  an 
assembly,  or  even  when  an  experienced  speaker 
suddenly  comes  upon  some  part  of  his  topic  on 
which  he  is  less  prepared.  We  hear  him  hesitate 
for  the  right  word,  can  see  before  our  eyes,  in  fact, 
his  Unconscious  struggling  with  him  and  him  with 
It  until  a  compromise  is  reached.  Sometimes  the 
compromise  is  quite  comical,  too,  as  when  the  min- 
ister said  he  had  in  his  heart  a  "  half  warmed 
fish,"  meaning  to  say  a  "  half  formed  wish."  This 
compromise  is,  however,  a  more  mechanical  type 
which  will  be  discussed  later  when  we  come  to 
speak  of  slips  of  the  tongue  and  of  the  pen. 

C.   Resistances 

These  stoppages  perceived  by  us  all,  in  our- 
selves as  well  as  in  others,  are  concrete  examples 
of  the  repression  mentioned  in  the  first  part  of  this 
chapter.  What  we  should  have  liked  to  say  or  do 
in  the  situation  mentioned  was  for  that  time,  at 


io8   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

any  rate,  completely  repressed.  The  Unconscious 
does  not  wish  to  utter  the  word  or  do  the  thing 
that  would  have  been,  according  to  our  later  view, 
most  appropriate,  because  the  word  or  thing  is 
connected  in  the  past  with  some  unpleasant  occur- 
rence which  It  does  not  wish  to  have  brought  into 
consciousness.  This  resistance  or  "  balking  "  of 
thought,  as  we  might  call  it,  has  been  used  in  what 
is  called  the  "  association  test "  on  criminals  to 
make  them  unwittingly  give  evidence  against 
themselves.  If,  for  instance,  a  man  suspected  of 
murder  is  told  to  say  what  thought  comes  to  him 
when  "  eating  "  is  mentioned,  and  a  hundred  or  so 
other  commonplaces,  among  which  is  inserted 
some  word  such  as  "  knife "  or  "  pistol "  or 
"  poison,"  and  the  time  he  takes  in  replying  to 
each  of  these  suggestions  is  carefully  recorded  to 
the  fifth  of  a  second,  there  is  hardly  a  criminal  so 
brazen  and  so  self-confident  who  will  not  hesitate 
for  at  least  a  fifth  of  a  second  when  he  hears  a 
word  associated  with  his  crime.  So  that  if  a  num- 
ber of  hundred-word  tests  be  administered  to  the 
same  man,  on  different  occasions,  he  will  inevitably 
let  out  something  at  least  that  may  be  used  as  a 
clue  to  discover  the  circumstances  of  the  crime. 
His  Unconscious,  not  being  in  his  power  but  he  in 
Its  power,  he  cannot  avoid  giving  expression  to  It. 
This  illustrates  another  characteristic  of  the 
Unconscious  which  is  akin  to  its  childishness, — 


RESISTANCES  109 

namely,  its  artlessness.  Being  untrained  and  uned- 
ucated through  the  centuries,  it  is  always  blurting 
out  everything  in  a  language  not  read  except  in 
psychological  laboratory,  criminal  investigation 
and  insane  asylum,  whereas  it  would  add  mate- 
rially to  the  understanding  of  men  concerning  their 
fellow-men  and  make  us  all  more  charitable  to- 
ward each  other  if  we  all  recognised  what  an 
enormous  part  in  our  lives  this  Unconscious  plays, 
and  that  the  persons  who  appear  to  be  trying  to 
injure  us  are  not  so  much  our  enemies  as  their 
own.  They  are  their  own  enemies  in  just  the  same 
way  that  each  of  us  is  his  own  enemy  because  we 
have  not  learned  to  master  our  Unconscious  and 
make  it  serve  society,  which  would  be  the  best  way 
for  us  to  serve  ourselves.  Its  artlessness  is  of  a 
piece  with  ignorance  of  all  kinds  which  we  try  in 
civilised  countries  to  abolish  in  conscious  ways  by 
means  of  the  different  forms  of  what  we  call 
"  education."  It  might  be  well  to  say  here,  how- 
ever, that  "  education "  has  as  yet  taken  little 
account  of  the  Unconscious,  and  that  most  if  not 
all  of  the  faults  of  the  pfesent  system  of  instruc- 
tion in  schools  and  colleges  are  attributable  to  that 
lack  of  wisdom.  For  "  Know  thyself  I  "  we  cannot 
each  and  every  one  do,  until  we  know  more  of 
ourselves  than  is  comprised  in  that  small  percent- 
age of  our  nature  which  has  been  termed  above  the 
"  fore-conscious." 


no   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

D.    Conflicts 

The  resistances,  seen  in  the  very  act  of  thinking, 
indicate  that  a  conflict  has  taken  place  between  one 
tendency  in  the  psyche,  usually  in  the  Unconscious, 
and  another  tendency  which  is  generally  the  cen- 
sor. These  conflicts,  as  revealed  so  constantly  by 
the  resistances,  cause  a  continual  irregularity  in  the 
running  of  the  mental  machine.  They  are  thus 
manifested  not  merely  in  the  mental  blank  which 
occurs  to  the  person  under  psychoanalytic  inves- 
tigation, who  says  that  he  cannot  think  of  anything 
at  all.  They  are  shown  not  merely  in  the  retard- 
ations of  ideas  in  the  association  tests.  They  are 
in  evidence  hourly  in  the  lives  of  most  people,  in 
actions  which  seem  to  be  interrupted  by  external 
circumstances,  but  really  are  not.  If  I  begin  to 
write  a  letter  to  a  person  and  come  to  a  point  when 
I  cannot  think  of  anything  to  say,  I  recognise  at 
once  the  result  of  some  unconscious  conflict.  If, 
during  the  writing  of  the  letter,  I  happen  to  think 
of  something  that  I  had  intended  to  do  but  had 
forgotten,  I  see  an  indication  of  another  conflict. 
If  I  finish,  seal  and  stamp  the  letter,  put  on  my  hat 
and  go  out,  leaving  the  lettergpn  the  desk,  and  so 
do  not  post  it,  still  another  conflict  is  shown.  All 
these  take  place  below  the  level  of  consciousness, 
and  only  the  net  result  is  manifest.  There  has 
been  a  battle  of  ideas,  and  only  the  victor  emerges. 


CONFLICTS  in 

Why  I  could  not  go  on  with  the  letter,  why  I  for- 
got the  other  action  whose  place  the  letter-writing 
takes,  why  I  forgot  to  post  the  letter,  can  be  known 
only  after  an  analysis  of  the  actions. 

In  short,  much  of  the  lack  of  consecutiveness 
of  our  daily  actions  is  the  result  of  the  appar- 
ently fortuitous,  though  really  determined,  nature 
of  the  ideas  which  occur  to  us  and  motivate  our 
acts.  We  think  of  things  we  should  like  to  do,  and 
which  would  be  very  advantageous  for  us,  and 
then  distractions  intervene  and  prevent  us  from 
striving  toward  those  ideals.  The  point  is  that, 
except  for  the  conflicts  which  have  taken  place,  and 
of  which  we  have  been  totally  unconscious,  we 
should  not  have  become  aware  of  those  distrac- 
tions. A  person  thoroughly  absorbed  in  his  work 
will  not  hear  or  see  what  otherwise  would  distract 
him.  Many  a  man  has  been  thrown  off  the  track 
he  was  travelling  on  in  his  day's  work  by  the  oc- 
currence of  some  essentially  trivial  thing,  noticed 
by  him  only  because  of  the  conflict  between  that 
thing  and  his  ideal,  a  conflict  that  had  taken 
place  in  the  Unconscious,  and  the  winner  in  which 
had  therefore  the  power  to  make  the  essentially 
trivial  occurrence  strong  enough  to  enter  his  con- 
sciousness and  attract  his  attention. 

Broadly  speaking,  we  may  say  that  the  con- 
flict may  be  external  or  internal.  The  external  is 
between  the  psyche  and  the  world  without.  In 


H2   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

this,  if  the  psyche  is  united  with  itself,  the  satisfac- 
tion comes  from  the  action  of  struggling  itself,  as 
when  we,  forgetting  ourselves,  effect  what  change 
we  can  upon  our  external  environment.  The  inter- 
nal conflict  is  between  the  tendency  to  look  for 
pleasure  or  for  absence  of  pain  as  a  result  of  the 
struggle.  The  struggle  is  then  practically  in  the 
emotions, — that  is,  in  our  very  selves, — and  is  not 
concerned  with  the  world  of  external  reality. 

Most  of  us  know  we  are  not  doing  our  best 
every  moment  of  every  day,  and  now  we  know  that 
the  cause  of  it  is  the  conflicts  that  have  taken 
place  without  our  knowledge.  It  is  interesting, 
therefore,  to  learn  of  the  antagonistic  forces  that 
struggle  with  each  other  in  the  Unconscious,  and  to 
inquire  what  gives  them  their  power  to  carry  on 
•  those  contests.  The  resistances  and  the  conflicts 
are  due  to  the  presence  in  the  Unconscious  of  the 
different  complexes.  In  the  chapter  on  Therapy 
the  share  of  these  complexes  in  the  production  of 
morbid  symptoms  is  further  discussed. 

E.    Complexes 

Complex  is  the  name  given  by  psychoanalysis  to 
an  idea  or  a  group  of  ideas  with  which  is  associ- 
ated a  tone  of  unpleasant  feeling  which  keeps  or 
tends  to  keep  the  complex  out  of  consciousness. 
We  all  have  complexes.  The  difference  between 


COMPLEXES  113 

the  complex  and  the  ordinary  forgotten  occur- 
rence is  that  the  latter  has  no  feeling  tone  con- 
nected with  it  when  it  occurs  and  therefore  does 
not  have  the  energy,  so  to  speak,  to  form  a  con- 
nection with  other  registered  experiences,  or  life 
to  go  on  developing  by  the  assimilation  of  other 
experiences.  Thus  every  experience  which  arouses 
at  the  same  time  a  pleasant  emotion  is  welcomed 
again  and  again  into  consciousness.  We  like  to 
recall  what  has  pleased  us.*  On  the  other  hand, 
we  know  that  we  do  not  try  to  recall  un- 
pleasant events.  That  a  recent  unpleasant  event 
tends  for  a  time  to  keep  recurring  to  our  minds 
is  an  example  of  what  might  be  called  an  emo- 
tional after-image,  and  gives  us  the  opportunity  of 
working  off  the  unpleasant  event  spiritually  by  con- 
sciously arranging  it  in  our  minds  and  finally  dis- 
posing of  it.  It  is  only  the  unpleasant  events 
which,  crowded  out  of  consciousness  by  our  fear  to 
face  them  as  adult  humans  should,  carry  with  them 
into  the  Unconscious  the  emotions  which  are  the 
life  of  ideas  and  allow  that  life,  like  the  sickly 
growth  of  pale  plants  in  a  cellar,  to  develop  un- 
cared  for  by  the  consciousness.  It  is  natural  that 
we  should  remember  the  pleasant  and  forget  the 
painful.  But  the  pleasant  occurrences,  being  fre- 

*  Exception  ally,  also,  we  like  to  brood  over  our  wrongs,  if 
we  are  so  constituted, — a  trait  which  is  mentioned  under  the 
head  of  Masochism  in  Chapter  VII. 


ii4  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

quently  evoked  and  talked  over  with  our  friends, 
are  brought  into  alignment  with  our  daily  con- 
scious lives.  They  give  us  strength  for  our  pres- 
ent, and  inspiration  for  our  future,  tasks.  They 
do  not  become  associated  in  a  lump,  in  some 
corner  of  our  minds,  but  are  connected  with  all  our 
waking  experiences.  A  bit  of  travel  is  something 
that  we  can  share  with  all  our  friends,  telling  them 
things  they  want  to  know.  A  pleasant  adventure 
makes  us  friends  with  everybody.  How  much 
more  sociable  are  strangers  when  on  a  holiday 
in  the  mountains  or  at  the  seashore !  The  travel 
or  adventure  is  unfolded  or  explicated,  so  to 
speak,  and  acquires  relations  with  all  of  our  men- 
tal life  and  so  does  not  become  coagulated  or 
tangled  up  in  one  bunch. 

A  complex,  on  the  other  hand,  being  repressed 
into  the  Unconscious  on  account  of  the  painful 
feeling  connected  with  it,  at  once  begins  in  the  Un- 
conscious to  associate  with  itself  a  number  of  other 
ideas,  all  of  which  take  on  the  unpleasant  quality. 
These  ideas,  therefore,  are  prevented  by  this  ac- 
quired unpleasantness  from  coming  into  conscious- 
ness. The  person  in  whose  mind  these  complexes 
are  forming  will  not,  without  an  effort,  be  able  to 
remember  these  ideas  when  he  wants  them.  The 
complexes  will  detach  from  the  fore-conscious, 
where  are  stored  the  ideas  which  are  subject  to 
voluntary  recall,  one  person's  name,  another  per- 


COMPLEXES  115 

son's  address,  another's  occupation,  and  drag  them 
down  toward  the  Unconscious,  where  they  will 
nevermore  be  subject  to  his  will.  It  is  thus  seen 
that,  when  looked  at  from  the  under  side, — as  it 
were,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  Unconscious, — 
there  must  be  complexes  forming  down  there  from 
the  time  of  our  earliest  infancy.  The  complexes 
continue  to  develop  and  attach  more  and  more 
ideas  to  themselves  until  finally  our  minds,  even 
those  of  us  who  are  completely  normal,  are  made 
up  of  an  overwhelming  majority  of  forgotten  or 
repressed  matter,  all  of  it  available  for  the  pur- 
pose of  feeding  the  complexes,  and  none  of  it  of 
any  use  to  ourselves.  Only  the  fullest  human  lives 
can  prevent  this  formation  of  a  sodden  mass  of 
complexes  in  the  Unconscious  of  every  one  of  us. 
The  experiences  of  a  thoroughly  unsuccessful  and 
disappointed  life  keep  on  making  for  oblivion, 
drawing  one  event  after  another  back  into  the 
unconscious  part  of  our  psyche.  The  most  active 
and  successful  men  and  women  therefore  will, 
other  things  being  equal,  have  the  fullest  mem- 
ories, will  be  able  to  converse  most  entertainingly, 
for  they  will  have  the  fewest  complexes  as  inhibi- 
tions on  their  mental  life,  whether  that  mental  life 
be  expressed  in  words  or  in  actions. 

Any  situation  that  reveals  the  working  of  the 
complex  is  called  a  complex  indicator.  (That  is: 
an  indicator  of  a  complex,  not  an  indicator  which 


u6   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

is  complex  in  its  nature.)  In  the  tragedy  of 
Hamlet  that  part  of  the  play  within  the  play 
where  the  murder  takes  place  produces  the  effect 
upon  Claudius  of  making  him  leave  the  room  in 
confusion.  His  confusion  indicated  his  complex, 
which  was  caked  about  his  own  guilt,  and  was 
his  complex  indicator.  In  the  association  experi- 
ments, where  a  number  of  words  are  given  to  the 
subject  and  he  is  told  to  utter  the  first  word  that 
occurs  to  him,  the  hesitation  he  shows  in  associat- 
ing with  some  of  the  words  is  his  complex  indicator 
and  the  word  that  caused  that  hesitation  is  invari- 
ably found  to  be  connected  with  some  complex.  It 
has  called  up  some  unpleasant  memory  which  he 
wishes  to  forget,  or  is  unwilling  to  publish;  and 
his  hesitation  is  caused  by  his  trying  not  to  say  the 
word  which  spontaneously  comes  to  his  mind,  for 
fear  it  will  betray  him,  but  to  think  of  and  say 
another.  Any  hesitation,  therefore,  is  likely  to  be 
a  complex  indicator,  except  in  the  case  of  people 
who  intuitively  know  this,  and  such  people  often 
betray  their  complexes  by  an  unexpected  or  inap- 
propriate fluency  or  glibness. 

It  sometimes  happens  that  there  is  in  a  given  in- 
dividual only  one  obvious  complex.  We  all  know 
people  who  are  a  "  little  bit  off  "  in  one  respect 
but  are  conventional  in  their  actions  in  every  other. 
The  eccentricities  of  genius  as  well  as  of  ordinary 
persons  are  examples.  George  Francis  Train 


COMPLEXES  117 

would  not  speak  to  an  adult  for  years  and  sat 
on  a  bench  in  Madison  Square  talking  to  chil- 
dren and  continually  ate  peanuts.  Other  persons' 
peculiarities,  such  as  an  inability  to  touch  cer- 
tain substances,  velvet,  silk,  cotton,  etc.,  or  a 
diet  consisting  of  rock  salt,  molasses  and  butter- 
nuts, or  a  refusal  to  eat  anything  with  raisins  in  it, 
or  a  belief  that  some  special  kind  of  food  is  impos- 
sible, like  strawberries  or  cucumbers,  all  of  these 
are  eventually  traceable  to  complexes.  It  is  well 
to  remember  that  the  complex  is  always  based 
on  unconscious  thoughts  and  that  the  reasons 
given  by  the  persons  are  not  ever  the  real  causes 
of  these  eccentricities.  Most  of  them  are  con- 
nected with  intimate  attitudes  toward  the  ideas 
not  merely  of  nutrition  but  of  reproduction. 

The  man  who  could  not  eat  food  containing 
raisins  explained  his  dislike  of  them  by  saying  that 
he  judged  all  tastes  (so-called)  by  the  feeling  of 
the  food  in  his  mouth,  that  raisins  felt  like  insects, 
and  that  he  really  liked  soft  and  tender  foods,  in 
spite  of  the  fact  that  he  had  a  good  set  of  teeth. 
The  upshot  of  it  all  was  that  he  showed  an  uncon- 
scious tendency  in  the  direction  of  breast  milk,  in 
other  words  was,  while  a  man  in  stature  and  years, 
only  an  infant  in  this  characteristic,  which,  indeed, 
as  the  analysis  progressed,  was  found  to  be  par- 
alleled by  infantile  traits  in  other  spheres  of  life. 
Thus  he  made  a  demand  upon  his  wife  for  an  ex- 


.ii  8    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

pression  of  tenderness  of  a  kind  that  should  have 
been  expected  only  from  his  mother.  He  showed, 
too,  an  attitude  toward  the  world  which  evinced 
in  him  an  expectation  that  it  would  give  him 
things,  not  that  he  should  force  things  from  it  or 
even  win  them  by  his  own  efforts.  This  was  side  by 
side  with  traits  that  enabled  him  to  do  acceptably 
the  tasks  imposed  upon  him  by  his  business,  and 
to  be  taken  by  his  acquaintances  for  a  man  in  most 
other  respects. 

F.    Phobias 

A  phobia  (Greek  word  for  fear)  is  a  recurrent 
or  dominating  fear  of  some  object  or  situation. 
All  humans  are  continuously  influenced  by  fears 
greater  or  less,  the  only  distinction  between  the 
ordinary  fear  and  that  fear  which  is  called  a 
phobia  being  its  strength  and  the  effects  which  it 
has  on  the  life  of  the  individual.  Most  of  our 
fears  are  so  well  hidden  that  they  do  not  appar- 
ently affect  our  conduct,  but  when  a  fear  is  so  great 
and  its  effects  so  numerous  and  so  potent  as  to 
make  our  social  effectiveness  much  less,  then  it  be- 
comes a  phobia.  If,  for  instance,  a  fear  of  any 
situation  or  thing  is  so  powerful  as  to  prevent  a 
person  from  fulfilling  any  of  his  duties  toward 
society,  such  as  getting  married,  then  it  should  cer- 
tainly be  regarded  as  a  phobia  and  the  person 
exhibiting  it  should  be  analysed.  Phobias  are  of 


PHOBIAS  [119 

course  as  numerous  as  are  things  or  situations,  but 
the  more  familiar  types  of  them  have  been  classed 
as  follows :  a  fear  of  closed  places,  which  is  known 
as  claustrophobia ;  a  fear  of  open  places,  which  is 
known  as  agoraphobia;  the  fear  of  being  alone, 
fear  of  dirt  or  germs,  fear  of  the  number  13,  etc. 
For  illustration  we  may  take  a  case  of  the  last 
named  fear  from  Pfister.  "  A  bachelor  forty- 
seven  years  old  carried  on  a  war  from  his  twelfth 
year  with  the  number  13.  His  sufferings  forced 
him  to  leave  school  and  spoiled  his  whole  life  for 
him.  He  was  constrained  to  pay  attention  to  the 
number  constantly.  Thirteen  minutes  before  and 
after  each  hour  was  a  moment  of  anxiety  for  him, 
as  well  as  every  position  of  the  hands  of  the  clock 
which  added  up  to  13,  e.g.  8  :  23.  Other  situations 
which  produced  the  anxiety  were,  to  mention  only 
a  few  out  of  hundreds:  If  it  struck  eleven  when 
two  persons  were  in  the  room,  or  if  five  persons 
were  at  table  at  eight  o'clock.  He  could  not  stay 
away  from  home  thirteen  hours.  The  whole  of 
March  (3d  month),  1910,  was  an  unlucky  month, 
in  which  he  did  not  dare  to  undertake  anything  im- 
portant, as  well  as  February,  1911,  etc.  The 
hours  from  five  to  eight  were  sinister  because  five, 
six,  seven  and  eight  add  up  to  26,  which  is  twice 
13.  Every  thirteenth  line  of  a  letter,  every  set  of 
numbers  which  summed  up  13  brought  misery. 
He  had  to  shun  not  only  every  house  numbered 


120   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

13,  but  all  the  residents  of  such  a  house.  .  .  . 
The  most  remarkable  was  the  inability  to  go  to  bed 
at  ten  o'clock  because  he  always  said  three 
prayers." 

The  phobias  just  mentioned  are  all  so-called 
"  abnormal "  cases,  that  is,  they  have  gone  so  far 
to  interfere  with  the  regular,  orderly  and  smooth 
working  of  the  daily  life  of  the  persons  exhibiting 
them.  Now,  every  preference  of  a  negative  char- 
acter— that  is,  every  disinclination  to  do  anything 
that  has  received  the  sanction  of  society — is  a 
state  of  mind  existing  in  an  otherwise  "  normal " 
person  and  corresponding  to  or  representing  in  the 
normal  person  the  phobia  of  the  abnormal  one. 
When  you  are  in  Rome,  do  as  the  Romans  do,  is 
an  adage  that  calls  for  the  complete  harmonising 
of  the  individual  with  his  environment.  There 
ought  really  to  be  nothing  in  our  lives  that  we 
should  not  be  eager  to  do,  just  as  our  fellows  do  it, 
if  not  even  a  little  better,  or  more  enthusiastically. 
To  live  among  people  and  continually  to  refuse  to 
do  the  things  that  the  people  all  around  us  are 
doing  is  a  restriction  upon  ourselves  that  has  been 
placed  upon  us  by  the  independent  activity  of  our 
complexes,  developing  as  they  do  in  the  depths  of 
our  Unconscious,  and  differs  only  in  degree  from 
the  well  developed  and  organised  phobias  that 
have  been  mentioned  above.  Disinclinations  are 
little  phobias;  acceptance  and  acquiescence  are 


OUR  MENTAL  ATTITUDE        121 

normal  healthy  states  of  mind.  Rejections  and 
refusals  and  declinings  are  unhealthy,  abnormal 
states  of  mind,  for  they  imply  a  lack  of  power  to 
cope  with  the  situations  rejected  or  dodged,  and 
an  unconscious  belief  on  the  part  of  the  declining 
person  that  his  constitution,  mental  or  physical,  is 
not  strong  enough  to  stand  the  strain. 

;*  Thus  the  neurotic  battles  with  spectres,  and 
the  normal,  too,  are  in  the  power  of  unreal  forces, 
which  lead  him  now  to  injury  and  now  to  good 
fortune.  The  liberation  from  Maya,  Illusion,  is 
indeed  an  essential  part  of  the  problem  of  salva- 
tion, but  not  in  the  way  that  Buddhism  teaches. 
The  emancipation  from  that  which  is  not  actual, 
but  which  stands  in  the  way  of  our  living  our  best, 
is  necessary  for  the  highest  possible  unfolding  of 
the  noblest  spiritual  powers.  But  the  liberation 
lies  only  in  this  new  unfolding  of  the  craving. 
Most  normals,  too,  suffer  from  obstructions  which 
rob  them  of  a  considerable  part  of  their  ability 
to  act "  (PFISTER,  Die  Psychanalytische  Methode, 
p.  128). 

G.    Our  Mental  Attitude 

One  of  the  first  problems  of  the  person  who  is 
confronted  with  the  existence  within  himself  of  a 
Titanic  force  such  as  the  craving  of  the  Uncon- 
scious, is  how  to  regard  that  Unconscious  within 
him.  Are  we  to  regard  it  as  a  hostile  force  within 


122   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

the  camp,  and  try  to  annihilate  it?  No,  for  it  is 
not  hostile  to  us  but  only  to  certain  of  our  limita- 
tions imposed  upon  us  by  our  necessity  of  living  as 
members  of  an  organic  whole,  society.  Are  we  to 
be  ashamed  at  the  discovery  or  enlightenment  con- 
cerning the  true  nature  of  that  which  is  so  great 
a  part  of  us,  and  so  great  and  invisible  a  factor  in 
all  that  we  say  or  do  ?  No,  for  we  are  not  alone  in 
that  particular.  All  of  our  fellows  are  as  clearly 
dominated  by  the  Unconscious  as  we.  Shame 
should  arise  only  from  a  knowledge  of  inferi- 
ority of  our  acts  from  a  moral  point  of  view.  And 
our  feeling  upon  learning  that  this  archaic  Titan 
is  still  alive  within  us  should  be  that  we  are  thank- 
ful for  having  been  warned  in  time  to  avoid  mak- 
ing at  least  some  of  the  mistakes  that  we  should 
have  made  if  we  had  remained  ignorant.  Are 
we  to  be  so  horrified  at  the  revelation  of  the 
patricidal  and  incestuous  monster  that  we  harbour 
in  our  breasts,  that  we  feel  discouraged  and  un- 
able to  cope  with  him  ?  No,  for  we  know  that  its 
primal  craving,  which  for  a  moment  strikes  us  as 
so  savage  and  brutal,  so  elemental  and  over- 
powering, needs  only  to  be  harnessed,  like  Ni- 
agara, to  become  docile  and  productive.  And 
just  as  the  waters  of  Niagara  have  been  employed 
to  generate  electricity  for  light  and  power,  now  in 
small  part  but  possibly  later  in  its  entirety,  so  the 
primal  forces  of  every  person  living  and  doing  his 


OUR  MENTAL  ATTITUDE        123 

work  in  a  civilised  community  are  now  partly 
available  for  the  purposes  most  advantageous  to 
society,  and  plans  can  be  made  immediately  to 
yoke  up  the  whole  of  each  individual's  power  for 
social  and  withdraw  it  from  asocial  aims.  All  the 
activities  of  men,  ploughing,  reaping,  buying,  sell- 
ing, reading  and  writing  and  studying,  belong  to 
the  type  of  action  controlled  by  what  is  called  di- 
rected thinking.  I  said  above  "  partly  available 
for  society."  It  seems  that  as  yet  all  the  directed 
activities  of  men  are  but  a  sort  of  safety  valve  to 
prevent  the  social  machine  from  being  blown  up  by 
its  superabundant  steam.  It  is  clear  that  if  all  the 
energy  of  the  human  race,  now  so  largely  dissi- 
pated in  undirected  thinking  and  its  resultant 
activities,  could  be  directed  toward  social  aims, 
the  numerous  ills  of  humanity,  so  many  of  which 
are  unnecessary,  would  be  reduced  to  a  mini- 
mum of  necessary  ills  of  which  there  are  quite 
enough. 

So  if  one  is  told  by  the  psychoanalyst  that  his 
dreams  reveal  an  infantility,  or  a  strong  mother- 
complex  or  father-complex,  he  may  be  assured  that 
the  dreams  of  most  persons  do  likewise.  Only 
the  new  information  requires  a  new  reaction.  We 
are  to  respond  to  the  new  environment  of  the 
Unconscious  that  we  find  ourselves  in,  by  a  new 
activity  directed  along  the  lines  indicated  by  the 
analysis.  The  first  characteristic  of  the  type  of 


i24  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

directed  thinking  is  that  it  fatigues  us,  and  that 
the  undirected  thinking  or  phantasying  does  not. 
Therefore  that  is  to  be  one  criterion  by  which  we 
may  judge  the  results  of  our  new  activities.  They 
must  produce  in  us  a  healthy  and  unworried,  un- 
troubled fatigue.  There  is  a  great  satisfaction 
comparable  to  the  keenest  physical  satisfaction 
given  to  mortals,  in  the  complete  exhaustion  of 
one's  powers  daily  in  the  pursuit  of  the  most  pro- 
ductive ends.  This  fatigue  differs  entirely  from 
the  fatigue  of  nervous  persons  in  whom  there  is  a 
psychical  conflict  ever  present.  Such  people  are 
fatigued  when  they  begin  a  piece  of  work,  by  rea- 
son of  the  conflict  in  their  ego  caused  by  the  fact 
that  they  are  not  united  with  themselves,  so  to 
speak,  and  that  every  motion  that  they  make  is 
opposed  by  forces  within  themselves  which  pull 
against  them  in  whatever  they  are  doing,  and 
make  each  separate  effort  twice  as  hard  as  it  would 
be  if  there  were  within  them  no  such  opposition 
to  everything  they  do.  It  is  as  if  they  were  carry- 
ing a  pound  of  some  commodity  in  a  case  that 
weighed  ten  pounds,  or  as  if  we  gave  to  a  day- 
labourer  a  shovel  weighing  fifty  pounds  with 
which  to  dig  up  shovelfuls  of  earth  weighing 
thirty  pounds.  The  test  of  the  right  kind  of  fa- 
tigue is  its  coming  at  the  end  of  a  day  full  of  toil 
in  which  we  can  forget  ourselves,  and  be  igno- 
rant of  the  fact  that  we  are  tired  until  after  we 


OUR  MENTAL  ATTITUDE        125 

stop  and  look  at  the  clock  and  find  that  it  is  time  to 
go  to  bed. 

This  is  a  strong  contrast  to  the  way  many  peo- 
ple work.  They  keep  looking  at  the  clock  and 
yawn,  and  the  unexpired  time  of  their  necessary 
hours  of  labour  acts  as  a  drag  upon  their  further 
effort.  So,  then,  the  test  of  the  productiveness  of 
a  day's  work  is  to  a  certain  extent  a  subjective 
one.  No  day  is  well  spent  if  it  contains  any 
psychical  conflicts  that  interfere  with  the  united 
functioning  of  the  entire  psyche  in  an  effort  which 
brings  at  the  end,  and  only  at  the  end,  of  the  day 
a  feeling  of  thorough  and  satisfactory  fatigue,  a 
fatigue  that  is  felt  more  or  less  as  a  surprise,  and 
which  prepares  the  mind  for  a  complete  relaxation 
in  sleep.  That  is  not  to  say  that  it  must  be  a 
dreamless  sleep.  It  is  an  undoubted  fact  that 
there  are  dreams  for  every  individual  every  night. 
He  does  not  always  remember  them,  and  for  the 
person  that  is  using  up  all  his  energies  every  day 
with  a  resultant  satisfactory  fatigue,  it  is  quite  un- 
necessary to  pay  any  attention  to  dreams.  But  if 
there  are  constant  dreams  or  frequent  dreams  of 
an  unpleasant  nature,  then  their  being  remembered 
is  a  sure  indication  that  the  person  is  not  using  up 
all  his  energy  every  day  as  he  should,  either  be- 
cause there  is  insufficient  activity  or  because  there 
is  too  much  conflict  in  his  ego  during  the  per- 
formance of  his  appointed  task. 


126   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

The  almost  universally  unknown  causes  of  our 
fatigues  or  our  insomnias  or  our  dreams,  and,  as 
will  be  seen  later,  of  many  of  our  illnesses,  are 
the  unconscious  wishes  which,  unacceptable  though 
they  may  be  to  consciousness  in  their  archaic  form, 
manage,  by  disguising  themselves  as  symbols  of 
various  kinds,  to  slip  by  the  censor  and  appear 
incognito  in  a  disguise  assumed  for  the  purpose 
of  effecting  their  work,  which  as  may  be  easily 
seen  is  at  variance  with  the  trend  of  social  evolu- 
tion. 

In  order,  therefore,  to  gain  a  still  deeper  in- 
sight into  the  causes  why  the  real  motives  of  our 
behaviour  from  day  to  day  are  so  neatly  hidden 
from  us  under  such  perfect  disguises,  it  will  be 
necessary  to  trace  very  briefly  the  course  of  de- 
velopment through  which,  as  psychoanalysis  has 
discovered,  the  individual  psyche  passes.  This 
development,  as  thus  outlined,  is  quite  different 
in  many  respects  from  that  hitherto  accepted  as 
the  manner  of  unfolding  of  the  particular  psyche, 
certain  qualities  being  assigned  to  it  by  the  newer 
psychology,  even  in  the  infancy  of  the  psyche, 
which  were  not  formerly  supposed  to  belong  to 
that  stage  of  development. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE  INDIVIDUAL  PSYCHE 

UPON  the  newborn  babe  streams  in  from  the  out- 
side world  a  multitude  of  impressions  which  are 
reacted  to  according  to  the  few  primal  desires 
with  which  it  is  supplied.  The  desires  or  cravings 
first  in  importance  are  those  of  respiration  and 
nutrition.  The  infant  has  first  to  breathe  and  then 
to  take  food.  The  contrast  in  feeling  between  the 
stream  of  impressions  assailing  it  from  without 
and  the  prenatal  Nirvana  in  which  it  has  existed 
is  so  strong  that  its  main  desires  are  to  renew  the 
feeling  of  the  warmth  and  calm  with  which  it  was 
surrounded  before  its  birth,  and  the  first  means  of 
accomplishing  that  gratification  is  by  taking  nour- 
ishment. Then  begins  a  struggle  between  activity 
and  passivity,  which  continues  through  life,  a 
struggle  between  motion  and  inertia,  between 
effort  and  relaxation;  it  might  almost  be  said 
between  life  which  incites  the  babe  to  outward 
activities,  and  death  which  seeks  to  drag  it  down 
to  an  insensate  condition.  Then  begins  the  strug- 
gle between  reality  and  pain-pleasure,  though  the 
struggle  does  not  become  conscious  until  adult- 

127 


128   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

hood  is  attained,  which  in  some  people  is  never, 
though  they  live  to  be  a  hundred. 

The  craving  for  satisfaction  grows  along  a  few 
simple  lines,  chiefly  the  nutritional  and  the  sexual. 
Many  symbolisms  in  folklore  indicate  the  close 
relationship  of  the  sexual  and  the  nutritional  crav- 
ings, one  of  which  is  the  phantasy  common  to 
children  and  savages  that  impregnation  is  caused 
by  certain  foods.  The  shock  which  Freud  has 
given  to  the  complacent  world  of  modern  con- 
ventionality is  due  to  his  maintaining  that  the 
infant,  even  from  the  earliest  months,  shows  un- 
mistakable signs  of  sexual  feeling.  This  is  quite 
contrary  to  the  general  supposition  that  the  dawn 
of  sexuality  is  at  the  time  commonly  called 
puberty. 

Freud  recognises  in  the  infant  several  different 
areas  or  zones  of  the  body  where  feelings  are 
located  which  are  sexual  in  quality.  These  areas 
are  called  by  him  erogenous  (love-creating)  zones. 
The  lip  zone  and  the  anal  zone  and  certain  zones 
on  the  skin  are  said  to  be  the  sources  of  sexual 
feeling  in  the  years  of  infancy,  as  are  the  muscles 
of  all  parts  of  the  body.  True  adult  sexuality  is 
attained  when  the  cravings  originating  in  these 
diverse  zones  leave  them  and  are  centred  in  the 
genital  zone,  thereby  effecting  what  is  called  the 
primacy  of  the  genital  zone. 

According  to  the  Freudian  scheme  the  child 


THE  INDIVIDUAL  PSYCHE       129 

spends  its  first  four  or  five  years  in  gaining  its  chief 
satisfaction  in  life  from  the  stimulation  of  these  few 
zones  of  sexuality.  It  gets  very  little  satisfaction 
from  the  outside  world,  but  most  of  it  comes  from 
squeezing  as  much  pleasure  as  it  can  from  the 
various  methods  of  stimulating  these  erogenous 
zones.  The  earliest  is  the  lip  zone,  and  the  preva- 
lence of  thumb-sucking  among  children  becomes 
the  classical  illustration  of  the  infantile  sexual  ex- 
citement. The  later  or  adult  form  of  sexual 
excitement  and  gratification  is  regarded  by  the 
Freudians  as  composed  of  the  sum  of  the  excita- 
tions of  the  other  zones  transferred  to  the  genital 
zone.  We  thus  have  a  number  of  sexual  feelings 
which  are,  in  the  infant,  diffused  over  different 
parts  of  the  body,  collected  in  the  adult  into  one 
part  of  the  body,  and  so  depriving  the  other  parts 
of  the  capacity  of  causing  sexual  pleasure.  The 
objection  to  this  theory  is  merely  the  logical  one 
that  he  has  taken  it  for  granted  that  the  sum  of 
a  number  of  elements  is  in  quality  the  same  as,  but 
in  intensity  stronger  than,  any  one  of  its  com- 
ponents. Psychologically,  however,  it  appears 
clear  that  the  infant's  sexuality  is  one  that  is  sepa- 
rated into  fragments,  located  in  various  places 
and  later  to  be  assembled. 

The  repugnance  against  seeing  anything  of  the 
quality  or  intensity  of  adult  sexual  feeling  at-' 
tributed  to  children  under  five  years  of  age  is  so 


130   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

strong  in  most  people  that  they  have  accused  the 
Freudians  of  reading  sex  into  everything.  The 
reply  to  this  accusation  is  that  it  is  true  that  all 
excitement  is  primarily  sexual,  but  that  the  word 
sexual  is  to  be  understood  in  a  very  broad  sense, 
and  that,  viewed  from  the  purely  scientific  stand- 
point, and  freed  as  it  should  be  from  all  ideas  of 
prurience  or  prudery,  there  is  no  reproach  in  re- 
garding what  is  admitted  as  the  prime  mover  of 
human  life  and  activity  as  an  essential  character- 
istic of  all  ages  of  human  life,  even  of  infancy.  The 
corollaries  of  thus  attributing  sexuality  in  a  broad 
sense  to  the  earliest  years  of  childhood  are,  as  will 
be  seen  later,  so  important  and  so  striking  in  their 
application  that  the  reader  will  do  well  to  restrain 
if  possible  his  indignation  against  what  he  may 
deem  to  be  a  wrong  view  of  the  innocence  of  child- 
hood, by  reflecting  that,  in  ascribing  sexual  feel- 
ings to  that  age,  the  Freudians  do  not  for  one 
moment  intend  that  the  innocence  and  purity  of 
the  child  shall  be  doubted. 

Developing  as  it  does  along  various  erogenous 
lines  which  converge  later  upon  the  central  point  of 
the  genital  zones,  the  psyche  passes  from  the  stage 
where  it  gets  all  its  satisfactions  now  from  one 
and  now  from  another  erogenous  zone,  and  thus 
entirely  from  its  own  body,  to  a  stage  where  it 
begins  to  differentiate  its  body  from  the  outside 
world  with  respect  to  the  satisfaction-giving  qual- 


THE  INDIVIDUAL  PSYCHE       131 

ity  now  of  one  and  now  of  the  other.  The  entire 
skin  is  recognised  as  one  of  the  erogenous  zones. 
The  child  up  to  five  years  of  age  is  without  shame 
and  enjoys  showing  his  naked  body  and  feeling  the 
air  and  other  objects  on  all  parts  of  it.  This 
tendency  is  called  "  exhibitionism,"  and  the  coun- 
terpart of  it  is  the  tendency  to  "  peep  "  which 
is  noticed  in  him  by  adults  generally  only  when  it 
is  directed  to  things  which  they  think  he  ought 
not  to  look  at.  The  child  loves  "  to  see  and  eke 
for  to  be  seye." 

A  period  in  the  development  of  the  individual 
psyche  is  passed  through  called  the  narcissistic 
period,  from  the  Greek  myth  of  Narcissus,  who 
was  infatuated  with  the  view  of  himself  which  he 
got  in  a  pool.  In  this  period  the  child  regards  all 
things  in  their  relation  to  itself  and  not  as  related 
each  with  some  other  thing  or  with  all  other 
things.  Up  to  this  point  the  principle  of  pleasure- 
pain  has  been  the  dominating  one.  Corresponding 
to  this  pleasure-pain  principle  which  posits  that 
the  wishes  of  the  child  are  fulfilled  or  not  in  the 
pleasure  or  pain  in  its  own  body,  we  have  as 
another  characteristic  of  the  infantile  psyche  a 
pleasure  in  inflicting  pain  upon  others,  a  form  of 
cruelty,  which  is  referred  to  in  psychoanalytic  lit- 
erature as  Sadism  (from  Count  de  Sade,  whose 
novels  exploit  cruelty  of  man  to  woman).  There 
is  also  a  negative  form  of  this  called  Masochism 


i32   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

(from  L.  von  Sacher-Masoch,  an  Austrian  novel- 
ist, who  depicts  this  form  of  cruelty  practised 
upon  self),  which  originates  in  the  tendency  of 
the  infantile  psyche  to  push  pleasure  so  hard  that 
it  becomes  pain,  and  then  to  acquire  a  fascination 
for  pain  inflicted  upon  itself. 

This  pair  of  opposites  is  explained  partly  by  the 
principle  of  ambivalence,  which  sums  up  our  ex- 
perience that  whatever  quality  of  sensation  is 
uppermost  in  the  mind  naturally  suggests  its  oppo- 
site. Thus  pain  suggests  pleasure  as  its  relief; 
pleasure  suggests  pain  as  its  possible  termination. 
White  is  more  closely  associated  with  black  than 
with  any  other  colour,  good  with  bad,  love  with 
hate.  A  parallel  is  drawn  between  the  intellectual 
and  the  emotional  ambivalence,  and  a  physical 
ambivalence  is  shown  in  the  fact  that  any  position 
of  the  body,  except  absolutely  relaxed  lying  down, 
is  maintained  only  by  the  constant  working  of  two 
sets  of  muscles,  one  pulling  against  the  other.  Fur- 
thermore, sensation  itself  is  continued  only  by  a 
change  very  similar  to  a  change  from  a  quality  to 
its  opposite,  in  that  without  contrast  sensation  is 
not  possible  to  maintain.  An  unchanging  blue 
soon  ceases  to  be  perceived  as  any  colour,  a  mono- 
tone loses  its  auditory  quality,  the  same  smell  if 
continued  indefinitely  is  soon  not  perceived  at  all. 
The  sensation  must  constantly  be  changed  from 
what  it  is  to  what  it  is  not.  Thus  ambivalence  is 


JHE  INDIVIDUAL  PSYCHE       133 

seen  to  be  the  very  foundation  of  external  per- 
ception. 

From  this  time  on  it  is  possible  that  a  sense  of 
reality  may  be  consciously  awakened  in  the  child. 
That  is,  it  may  begin  to  be  aware  that  all  the 
effects  of  action  may  not  be  the  pleasure  or  pain  it 
feels  itself.  It  may  begin  to  know  that  physical 
effects  may  be  produced  by  itself  upon  the  outside 
world,  effects  that  are  not  equally  matched  with 
states  of  pleasure  or  pain  in  its  own  body.  The 
squeezing  of  pleasure  out  of  the  sensations  of  the 
child's  own  body  in  the  different  erogenous  zones 
leads  not  only  to  universal  self-abuse  of  the  physical 
kind  in  infancy,  but,  at  a  later  date,  to  very  many 
forms  of  mental  activity  indulged  in  for  the 
ecstatic  quality  of  the  pleasure  derived  from  them. 
When  these  are  recognised  as  a  form  of  mental 
self-abuse,  they  are  frequently  discontinued,  and 
all  other  acts  are  scrutinised  for  elements  sym- 
bolising this  kind  of  introversion.  Part  of  the 
rage  for  reading  books  shown  by  some  young  per- 
sons is  a  form  of  mental  self-abuse  in  that  it  is 
centripetal,  seeking  pleasure  not  from  the  outside 
world,  but  in  the  inner  life,  a  solitary  vice  which 
leads  to  other  forms  of  introversion.  While  it 
is  of  perfectly  natural  origin,  and  no  human  but 
goes  through  a  period  of  it,  the  normal  individual 
inevitably  develops  away  from  it  and  turns  his 
activities  outward  from  his  own  body  and  mind. 


134  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

The  child  will  then  begin  to  take  an  interest  in 
the  actions  of  other  persons,  and  a  stage  is  passed 
through  which  may  be  called  the  hero-worship 
stage.  This  is  the  age  before  the  craving  has 
become  fixed  on  the  opposite  sex,  and  is  the  period 
of  ardent  friendships,  boy  with  boy  and  girl  with 
girl.  This  state  of  the  psyche  has  been  called  the 
homosexual  stage,  and  after  a  time  it  gives  place 
to  the  heterosexual  stage,  in  which  each  human 
normally  picks  out  his  or  her  life  mate  from  the 
other  sex. 

The  homosexual  stage  in  the  development  of 
the  individual  psyche  is  based  on  the  fact  of  the 
indeterminateness  of  sex  at  one  stage  in  the 
physical  development  of  the  individual.  There  is 
a  period  in  the  growth  of  the  embryo  when  it  is 
neither  male  nor  female  but  may  later  become 
either  the  one  or  the  other.  Furthermore,  there 
is  no  individual  who  does  not  have  in  an  unde- 
veloped state  some  physical  features  which  are, 
when  fully  developed  in  the  other  sex,  accounted 
as  essential  characteristics  of  that  other  sex,  e.g. 
the  breasts  in  males  and  the  hair  on  the  face  of 
human  females.  Parallel  with  his  physical  bi- 
sexuality  runs  a  psychical  bisexuality  in  all  humans. 
In  the  infantile  psyche  the  sexes  are  much  less 
differentiated  than  in  the  adult.  Little  girls  are 
mentally  in  every  way  much  more  like  little  boys 
than  women  are  like  men.  In  the  homosexual 


THE  INDIVIDUAL  PSYCHE       135 

stage  the  masculine  element  in  young  girls  seeks 
out  the  feminine  element  in  other  children,  boys 
or  girls.  Young  girls  have  not,  of  course,  enough 
masculinity  to  desire  the  companionship  of  women 
nor  yet  enough  true  femininity  to  desire  the  un- 
couth roughness  of  boys. 

The  progress  of  the  psyche  in  attaining  true 
adult  masculinity  or  femininity  may  be  arrested 
at  any  step.  Women  with  masculine  traits,  mental 
or  physical,  are  common,  as  well  as  men  with 
feminine  traits.  This  accounts  for  much  of  the 
strong  affection  of  some  women,  particularly  if  it 
is  the  only  strong  affection  in  either  woman's  life, 
and  is  the  cause  of  much  of  the  devoted  comrade- 
ship of  men.  A  highly  masculine  man  is  likely  to 
have  as  intimates  men  with  less  masculinity  than 
he.  He  spiritually  plays  man  to  their  woman. 
The  over-masculine  woman  in  her  intimacy  with 
another  woman  may  be  spiritually  playing  man  to 
the  other  woman,  who  in  turn  may  be  ultra- 
feminine  and  want  masculine  traits  in  a  friend,  but 
not  too  masculine,  as  a  real  man  would  be. 

The  extreme  importance  of  this  genetic  view 
of  the  psyche  will  be  appreciated  only  when  we 
realise  that  the  psychical  development  of  any 
human  being  may  be  arrested  at  any  one  of  these 
stages.  It  not  only  may  be  arrested,  but  it  very 
frequently  is  arrested,  or  it  is  uneven,  some  parts 
of  it  being  more  advanced  than  others  even  in 


i36   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

the  same  person,  with  corresponding  mental  pecu- 
liarities which  are  noted  but  not  understood  by  the 
person  or  his  friends.  In  fact,  Freud  has  gone  so 
far  as  to  say  that  there  is  not  a  single  peculiarity 
that  any  individual  can  show  that  is  not  at  bot- 
tom a  sexual  peculiarity,  derived  from  the  retarda- 
tion or  complete  arrest  of  some  part  of  this  sexual 
development,  in  the  broad  sense,  as  briefly  out- 
lined above.  With  this  is  closely  connected  the 
CEdipus  situation  which  has  been  given  a  short 
exposition  in  a  preceding  chapter.  The  natural 
way  for  the  evolution  of  the  relations  of  the  in- 
dividual to  those  persons  who  stand  nearest  to 
him  or  her,  father,  mother,  brother  and  sister,  is 
that  he  or  she  should  before  finding  a  life  mate 
be  thoroughly  separated  in  feeling  from  the  other 
members  of  the  family,  and  not  be  swayed  in  the 
choice  of  a  mate  by  any  unconsciously  perceived 
similarity  between  the  loved  object  and  the 
mother,  in  the  case  of  the  man,  or  the  father,  in 
the  case  of  the  woman.  But  psychoanalysis  has 
shown  that  this  unconscious  element  in  the  choice 
has  been  very  common  and  is  the  real  cause  of 
a  great  deal  of  the  unhappiness  of  married  life. 
This  is  indeed  the  literal  application  in  everyday 
life  of  the  CEdipus  myth.  It  is  frequently  the 
cause  of  that  mystery — love  "  at  first  sight."  The 
man  who  falls  in  love  at  first  sight  with  a  woman 
is  doing  so  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  because  there 


THE  INDIVIDUAL  PSYCHE       137 

is  a  similarity  in  appearance,  voice,  complexion, 
nose,  hair,  ears,  eyes  or  what  not,  with  his  first 
love, — namely,  his  mother.  That  is  a  statement 
which  will  be  met  with  contradiction,  vehement 
in  proportion  to  the  truth  of  the  statement  in  the 
individual  case.  The  greatest  need  for  a  denial  is 
found  by  those  who  fear  the  truth  of  a  state- 
ment. 

It  would  require  far  too  much  space  to  give  in 
detail  the  various  combinations  of  arrested  and 
retarded  development  in  the  sexual  development 
of  the  psyche  only  hinted  at  above.  We  all  know, 
however,  what  different  features  of  personality 
are  valued  by  men  in  their  estimation  of  women, 
and  vice  versa  what  different  characteristics  in 
men  are  looked  for  by  women.  In  general  it  may 
be  said  that  when  a  girl  chooses  for  her  husband 
a  man  much  older  than  herself,  she  is  taking  him 
at  least  partly  because  he  is  in  some  respects,  age 
included,  like  her  father.  All  the  other  character- 
istics of  older  men  enter  unconsciously  into  the 
choice,  too.  The  result  cannot  possibly  be  as 
happy  as  if  these  elements  were  not  predominating 
in  the  selection.  Or  if  a  man  marries  a  woman 
older  than  himself,  it  is  ten  to  one  that  he  is 
unconsciously  playing  a  metaphorical  CEdipus  to 
her  Jocasta,  and  that  if  he  does  not  tear  out  his 
own  eyes,  as  CEdipus  did,  he  may  do  so  figura- 
tively, just  as  did  the  man  who  became  blind 


138    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

because  of  unconscious  hate  of  his  wife.*  (See 
p.  222.) 

An  extraordinary  case  of  the  CEdipus  com- 
plex, or  abnormal  unconscious  fixation  on  the 
mother,  in  the  case  of  the  man,  is  described  in 
D.  H.  Lawrence's  novel,  S<?ns  and  Lovers. 

By  this  time  a  fairly  clear  idea  may  be  derived 
of  the  deep  importance  for  human  welfare  and 
happiness  of  the  psychoanalytic  description  of  the 
manifestations  of  the  Unconscious  in  the  life  of 
the  men  and  women  around  us.  And  it  must  not 
be  forgotten,  it  must  never  be  allowed  to  slip  out 
of  consciousness,  as  we  read  about  these  uncon- 
scious fixations  of  the  craving  upon  the  improper 
persons,  that  they  are  unconscious,  that  the  per- 
sons suffering  them  are  totally  unaware  of  it,  and 
that  by  virtue  of  its  being  a  repressed  state  the 
telling  of  it  as  true  in  their  case  meets  at  once  with 
the  most  strenuous  denial.  They  have,  in  their 
Unconscious,  the  strongest  possible  reasons  to  re- 
ject any  such  assertion.  The  general  proposition 
that  such  a  close  psychical  relation  between  mother 
and  son  or  between  father  and  daughter  is  bad,  is 
readily  admitted.  It  shocks  our  sense  of  decency 
to  have  it  called  an  incestuous  relation,  as  the 
Freudians  call  it,  because  we  usually  restrict  in- 

*  A  too  strong  affection  for  the  father,  on  the  part  of  a  girl, 
when  it  amounts  to  what  is  known  as  an  unconscious  fixation, 
is  known  as  the  Electra  complex. 


THE  INDIVIDUAL  PSYCHE       139 

cest  to  a  physical  relation,  and  we  are  accustomed 
to  regard  conscious  fatherly  affection  for  daughter 
and  motherly  affection  for  son  the  sweetest  affec- 
tions that  can  be  found.  This  conscious  high 
appreciation  of  each  other  existing  between  parent 
and  child  of  opposite  sex  is,  indeed,  not  what  is 
meant  here.  It  is,  on  the  other  hand,  the  too 
close  unconscious  psychical  relation  which  is  the 
cause  of  so  much  of  the  disappointment  in  mar- 
ried life.  It  has  been  found  again  and  again  in 
psychoanalytic  treatment  of  various  nervous  trou- 
bles that  they  were  caused  by  this  unconscious 
fixation,  a  condition  which  is  discoverable  only 
through  psychoanalysis. 

It  is  a  case  of  reducing  the  whole  of  the  most 
important  human  relations  to  the  following :  ( i ) 
the  relation  of  the  wife  to  the  husband,  and 
(2)  the  relation  of  the  husband  to  the  wife,  de- 
pending largely  on  (3)  the  relation  of  the  wife  to 
her  mother,  (4)  to  her  father  and,  practically  the 
same  as  (3)  and  (4),  her  relation  (5)  to  her  sis- 
ter or  sisters  and  (6)  to  her  brother  or  brothers, 
together  with  (7)  the  relation  of  the  husband  to 
his  mother,  (8)  to  his  father,  (9)  to  his  brother 
or  brothers,  and  ( 10)  to  his  sister  or  sisters.  But 
the  most  important  of  these  are  (7)  the  CEdipus 
complex,  so  called,  and  (4)  the  so-called  Electra 
complex.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  the  relations  of  a 
man — the  unconscious  psychical  relation  is  meant, 


i4o   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

of  course — to  his  mother,  his  wife  and  his  daugh- 
ter are  much  the  same,  any  one  of  them  standing 
in  the  relation  of  surrogate,  i.e.  substitute,  for 
the  other.  Similarly  the  relations  of  the  wife  to 
her  father,  her  husband  and  her  son  are  again 
such  that  any  one  of  them  may  be  the  surrogate  in 
the  Unconscious  for  the  other.  This  is  a  point  of 
great  importance  in  the  interpretation  of  dreams, 
as  well  as  in  the  appraisal  of  these  factors  in  the 
causation  of  nervous  troubles. 

To  return  to  our  statement  made  earlier  in 
this  section,  we  saw  that  in  order  to  be  able  to 
make  proper  selection  of  a  life  mate  a  person 
has  to  be  free  from  any  unconscious  fixation  upon 
the  parent  or  parent's  surrogate  of  the  opposite 
sex.  It  is  quite  clear  in  the  case  of  the  man  why 
this  is  so  closely  connected  with  the  unconscious 
weaning  of  the  man  from  his  mother.  If  he  is  un- 
consciously controlled,  as  so  many  are,  in  his 
choice  of  a  wife  by  his  unconscious  fixation  on  his 
mother,  he  will  in  picking  out  a  woman  be  more 
likely  to  select  one  who  will  mother  him  in  more 
senses  than  one,  and  in  so  selecting  he  is,  of 
course,  going  back  to  the  days  of  his  own  infancy. 
That  implies  that  he  is — unconsciously,  of  course 
— himself  at  the  infant  level  of  psychical  develop- 
ment. And  as  he  has  not  progressed  beyond  that 
level  himself  he  will  not  have  the  mental,  moral 
and  spiritual  qualities  that  will  continue  to  cause 


THE  INDIVIDUAL  PSYCHE       141 

him  to  be  regarded  by  his  wife  as  a  normal  wife 
should  regard  her  husband.  If  in  addition  to  that 
the  wife  herself  has  an  unconscious  fixation  upon 
her  father  the  difficulties  are  doubled,  for  she  will 
constantly  be  looking  to  her  husband  for  qualities 
that  she  could  rightly  expect  only  from  her  father, 
and  which  are  doubly  impossible  from  a  man  who 
is  unconsciously  not  a  man  but  in  his  very  rela- 
tions to  his  wife  an  infant. 

Thus  we  get  the  worst  possible  combination, 
and  it  is  not  at  all  uncommon.  It  is  true  that  men 
and  women  have  thus  lived  together  in  outwardly 
peaceful  conditions  and  have  only  been  dimly 
aware  that  something  was  the  matter,  but  they 
could  not  tell  what.  Some  have  even  lived  thus  in 
blissful  ignorance  that  there  was  anything  at  all 
the  matter  in  their  married  life.  I  hope  no  such 
people  will  have  the  misfortune  to  have  this  book 
fall  into  their  hands!  If  it  does,  they  may  rest 
assured  that  they  are  not  responsible  for  their 
misfortune,  and  that  there  are  plenty  of  other 
people  in  the  world  just  like  them. 

Of  the  unconscious  relations  existing  between 
the  two  parents  and  the  children  of  both  sexes 
as  indicated  in  a  preceding  paragraph,  the  one 
which  has  received  the  greatest  amount  of  atten- 
tion from  the  psychoanalysts  is  the  relation  of  the 
child  to  the  father.  The  unconscious  psychical 
attitude  of  the  child  to  the  father  is  summed  up 


i42   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

in  the  expression  father-complex  or  father-imago 
or  father-image.  Now,  the  word  imago  was 
chosen  by  the  psychoanalysts  to  express  the  ap- 
pearance of  the  parent  to  the  Unconscious  of  the 
child.  So  we  speak  of  the  father-image  and  the 
mother-image.  It  is  interesting  to  note  in  this 
connection  the  meaning  of  the  word  imago  in  the 
ancient  Roman  customs  of  funeral  ceremonies. 
The  images  or  imagines  were  masks  of  ances- 
tors modelled  in  wax  and  painted,  preserved  by 
patrician  families,  and  exposed  to  view  on  cere- 
monial occasions,  and  carried  in  their  funeral  pro- 
cessions by  persons  specially  appointed  to  walk  in 
procession  before  the  body  wearing  the  masks  of 
the  deceased  members  of  the  family,  and  clothed 
in  the  insignia  of  the  rank  which  they  had  held 
when  alive  (Harper's  Classical  Dictionary) .  The 
father-image,  therefore,  is  the  complex  of  all  the 
attributes  unconsciously  projected  upon  the  father 
by  the  child.  This  photograph  on  the  wrinkled 
film  of  the  child's  Unconscious  shows  the  child's 
unconscious  psychic  reactions  to  the  situation  of 
having  a  father,  in  which  are  included  all  the 
restraints  which  society  imposes  upon  the  physical 
manifestations  of  the  unconscious  cravings,  to- 
gether with  the  arbitrary  and  fortuitous  exactions 
of  the  particular  father  or  father  surrogate. 
Analogous  remarks  might  be  made  concerning 
the  mother-image. 


THE  INDIVIDUAL  PSYCHE       143 

The  imago  thus  represents  in  its  comparative 
extent  in  any  given  individual  a  measure  of  the 
development  of  the  psyche  toward  a  separate 
existence.  If  the  mother-  or  father-imago  is 
found  by  analysis  to  play  in  the  Unconscious  of 
any  individual  a  greater  part  than  it  should,  the 
psyche  is  by  so  much  short  of  its  proper  inde- 
pendence. Jung  maintains  that  the  father-image 
is  responsible  for  most  of  the  ills  of  neurotics,  and 
that  if  there  is  no  father's  personality  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  case,  there  will  always  be  found  a 
dominating  influence  exerted  by  the  grandfather. 
The  father-image,  together  with  the  mother- 
image,  is  seen  to  be  closely  connected  with  the 
CEdipus  complex  in  that  it  reveals  a  too  great 
fixation  of  the  Unconscious  upon  the  mother  and  a 
corresponding  hostility  to  the  father.  A  study 
which  has  been  made  by  the  psychoanalysts  of  the 
unconscious  reactions  of  an  only  child  to  the  father 
and  mother  situation,  shows  that  it  is  very  difficult 
for  an  only  child  to  acquire  the  unconscious  sepa- 
ration from  the  images  successfully  to  attain  inde- 
pendent happiness. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

DREAMS 

IF  questioned  about  their  dreams,  most  people 
called  normal  will  say  that  they  rarely  or  never 
dream,  or  that  they  have  a  recurrent  dream  of  so 
peculiar  a  nature  that  they  cannot  explain  it.  The 
general  attitude  toward  dreams  is  that  they  are  of 
little  significance  for  the  past  or  the  present  and 
of  none  whatever  for  the  future  of  the  individual. 
The  modern  theory  of  dream  analysis,  however, 
contradicts  both  these  statements. 

The  first  dictum  of  the  present  theory  of  dream 
interpretation  is  that  the  dream  is  an  expression 
of  the  craving  of  the  Unconscious  or,  in  other 
words,  that  it  represents  the  ideal  fulfilment  of  a 
wish.  After  the  acceptance  (positive  or  nega- 
tive) of  the  statements  already  made  in  this  book 
about  worry  and  sympathy — namely,  that  worry  is 
a  fear  which  is  in  turn  a  negative  wish,  and  that 
sympathy  is  always  a  negative  wish,  albeit  a  wish 
nevertheless — it  will  be  easier  to  refute  the  natural 
objection  that  the  dream  of  the  death  of  a  be- 
loved relative  or  of  a  dear  friend  is  the  repre- 
sentation of  the  fulfilment  of  a  wish,  a  wish  being 

144 


DREAMS  145 

the  definite  specific  form  taken  by  the  general  crav- 
ing already  mentioned. 

A  man  dreams  that  a  burglar  enters  his  room 
and  that  he  fires  a  pistol  at  the  intruder  again 
and  again,  and  the  bullets  hit  the  burglar  every 
time,  but  do  not  kill  him.  After  telling  me  this 
very  brief  dream  the  dreamer  asked  me  what  I 
could  make  out  of  it.  I  told  him  that  the  com- 
plete analysis  of  any  dream  would  take  hours  of 
study,  even  a  dream  so  short  as  this.  But  I 
pointed  out  to  him  that  the  evident  wish  in  this 
dream  was  to  accomplish  something  the  real  doing 
of  which  was  in  some  way  frustrated.  I  asked 
him  if  he  had  not  been  dissatisfied  with  the  quality 
of  some  of  his  performances.  He  admitted  with 
an  expression  of  much  regret  that  he  was  wasting 
a  great  deal  of  his  time  which  should  have  been 
more  profitably  employed.  He  read  reams  of 
novels  which  he  forgot  as  soon  as  he  had  read 
them. 

The  analysis  of  a  dream,  according  to  the  prac- 
tice of  the  Freudian  psychology,  consists  of  the 
so-called  free  associations  of  the  dreamer.  In  a 
quiet  room  free  from  all  interruptions  the  analyst 
studies  his  subject  (or  patient,  as  the  greater  part 
of  work  on  dreams  in  the  newer  scientific  way  has 
been  carried  on  by  physicians  who  have  adopted 
the  Freudian  methods  in  their  practice),  or  anal- 
ysand,  as  the  subject  is  sometimes  called,  who  sits 


i46  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

in  an  easy-chair  or  lies  on  a  couch.  In  these  cir- 
cumstances, which  to  many  persons  appear  very 
absurd,  when  they  consider  the  unusualness  of  the 
situation,  the  analysand  is  instructed  to  utter 
whatever  conies  into  his  head,  without  the  least 
selection,  and  not  to  be  afraid  to  communicate 
anything,  no  matter  how  trivial.  On  the  principle 
already  referred  to  that  the  Unconscious  is  most 
unobstructed  when  the  least  possible  restrictions 
are  placed  upon  it,  there  come  up  the  most  ab- 
surdly unconnected  thoughts,  even  though  they 
start  from  the  topics  mentioned  in  the  dream.  But 
it  has  been  found  over  and  over  again  that  noth- 
ing really  irrelevant  comes  to  mind.  When  it  is 
reflected  that  the  object  of  the  study  of  the  dream 
is  to  ascertain  the  character  of  the  unconscious 
thoughts,  and  that  the  unconscious  thoughts  are 
usually  repressed,  it  will  be  seen  that  there  could 
hardly  be  devised  a  better  way  to  get  them  to  the 
surface. 

Most  persons  would  consider  such  a  mental 
operation  an  extremely  unprofitable  procedure,  as 
indeed  it  is  for  those  whose  Unconscious  does  not 
trouble  them  too  much.  But  when  a  physician  to 
whom  they  are  paying  good  money  assures  them 
that  apparently  the  most  inconsequential  thought 
is  yet  closely  connected  with  the  states  of  mind  that 
are  causing  a  physical  disorder,  the  whole  process 
begins  to  look  less  ridiculous  and  they  go  on.  But 


DREAMS  147 

the  analysand  soon  finds  that  the  thoughts  do  not 
come  so  easily.  The  restraints  imposed  on  him 
by  the  censor  (the  projection  upon  him  of  the 
conventionalities  of  present-day  social  relations) 
have  been  so  uniformly  respected  by  him  and  he 
has  been  so  constantly  in  the  habit  of  refusing 
utterance  to  the  inane  fancies  that  have  occurred 
to  him  now  and  then,  that  he  experiences,  espe- 
cially at  the  first  interviews,  a  certain  embarrass- 
ment born  of  the  desire  to  talk  sense,  and  to  keep 
to  a  certain  topic,  remaining  relevant  according  to 
the  conventional  ideas  of  relevance,  and  some  of 
the  thoughts  that  occur  to  him  in  these  seances 
seem  so  grotesquely  remote  from  his  purpose  in 
consulting  the  physician  that  he  hardly  has  the 
face  to  speak  them  out,  thinking  that  it  must  be 
wasting  valuable  time,  both  his  own  and  the  physi- 
cian's. But  this  point  of  view  is  exactly  the  one 
that  the  analysand  is  most  desired  not  to  take,  but 
to  pour  forth  without  restraint  everything  with- 
out regard  to  whether  it  appears  to  him  to  have 
a  connection  with  anything  at  all.  If  all  that  is  in 
the  mind  of  any  individual  could  be  taken  out  and 
examined  by  the  expert  modern  psychologist,  it 
would  at  once  be  evident  just  what  were  the  most 
predominant  thoughts  and  it  could  easily  be  dis- 
covered what  was  the  reason  for  the  subject's  in- 
ability to  act  as  a  perfectly  coordinated  member  of 
society.  But  this  exhaustive  inventory  of  the 


148   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

contents  of  the  individual's  mind  is  quite  impos- 
sible of  accomplishment,  and  the  dream  analysis  is 
designed  to  take  the  purest  utterance  of  the  Un- 
conscious, the  dream,  and  supplement  it  by  the 
thoughts  evoked  by  the  dream,  and  thereby  to  get 
a  sort  of  cross-section  of  the  stream  of  the  uncon- 
scious thoughts,  and,  with  that  as  a  sample,  to 
form  an  estimate  of  the  mental  lack  of  order  (to 
avoid  the  use  of  the  word  disorder)  which  is  re- 
flected or  projected  through  the  subject's  slightly 
averted  relations  with  society,  and  by  bringing 
these  into  full  consciousness  to  straighten  out  their 
slanting,  not  to  say  crooked,  character,  and  to 
readjust  the  subject  in  all  his  relations  to  the  com- 
munity in  which  he  lives. 

But  to  continue  the  account  of  the  analytic  pro- 
cedure. After  the  analysand  has  set  himself  to 
speak  out,  without  restraint,  the  thoughts  that 
occur  to  him  in  connection  with  the  dream,  he 
realises  that  there  is  some  force  opposing  the 
straightforward  outgiving  of  his  fancies.  This 
force  is  known  as  the  resistance  (Widerstand} . 
If  this  resistance  is  overcome,  depending  entirely 
upon  the  rapport  between  the  analyser  and  the 
analysand,  there  arises  a  confidence  felt  by  the 
latter  toward  the  former,  and  realising  the  real 
interest  of  the  former  and  the  possible  importance 
and  bearing  upon  his  case  of  the  ideas  that  previ- 
ously seemed  so  inconsequential,  the  analysand  is 


DREAMS  149 

then  capable  of  more  like  what  seems  a  heart-to- 
heart  talk.  This  change  of  heart  is  known  as  the 
transference  (Uebertragung} — see  Chapter  XI — 
and  is  considered  an  essential  factor  in  the  suc- 
cessful analysis  of  any  mental  difficulty.* 

I  will  call  the  reader's  attention  once  more  to 
the  fact  that  the  content  of  the  dream  is  entirely 
symbolical,  and  say  that  the  exact  meaning  of  the 
symbols  of  the  dream  can  be  understood  only  by 
means  of  a  thorough  analysis  by  an  expert  psy- 
choanalyst where  all  restraints  upon  the  expres- 
sion of  the  unconscious  craving  are  removed. 
The  next  step  in  the  dream  study  is  the  interpreta- 
tion, which  is  based  on  the  analysis. 

I  might  illustrate  the  three  steps  in  dream  study 
by  means  of  the  burglar  dream.  The  dream  has 
been  given  above,  the  analysis  in  this  case  con- 
sisted solely  of  the  remark  of  the  dreamer  that 
he  was  dissatisfied  with  the  results  of  his  life  work 
as  a  physician,  and  the  fact,  quite  evident  in  the 
conversation,  that  he  was  a  confirmed  stutterer. 
The  stuttering  is  interesting  in  relation  to  the 
repeated  shots  at  the  burglar.  They  are  both  ex- 

*  A  note  should  be  added  here  as  to  the  length  of  the  process 
of  psychoanalysis.  It  varies  according  to  circumstances,  from 
one  sitting  to  hundreds.  Daily  talks  for  eight  months  or  a  year 
may  be  necessary  to  resolve  some  of  the  problems  brought  by 
people  who  are  physically  sound,  according  to  medical  examina- 
tion, while  a  single  sitting  has  been  known  to  remove  a  serious 
difficulty  that  has  endured  for  years. 


150   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

amples  of  frustrated  effort.  The  interpretation 
was  that  the  dreamer  needed  to  give  more  time 
to  serious  work  in  medical  research.* 

The  most  palpable  characteristic  of  dreams  in 
general  is  their  apparent  absurdity,  or  at  least 
triviality.  But  psychoanalysis  has  shown  that 
there  are  no  absurd  or  trivial  dreams.t  Every 
dream,  expressing  as  it  does  an  unconscious  wish 
on  the  part  of  the  dreamer,  is  a  very  important 
part  of  him.  When  rightly  interpreted,  it  is  an 
indication  of  what  he  really  wishes  and  what  he  is 

*This  is  the  simplest  possible  example.  I  will  give  a  slightly 
more  complicated  dream  with  its  analysis  and  interpretation,  but 
will  say  that  one  case  of  a  girl  otherwise  very  intelligent  and 
quite  normal,  but  who  had  a  case  of  hysteria,  has  been  reported  in 
a  European  psychoanalytic  journal,  in  an  article  which  occupies 
1 80  pages. 

f  It  is  important  that  the  reader  should  recall  at  this  point  the 
facts  concerning  the  nature  of  the  censor, — namely,  that  he  is  that 
part  of  our  psyche  which  represents  in  us  the  force  of  society 
which  is  continually  at  work  upon  us  as  long  as  we  continue  to 
be  members  of  any  social  unit.  The  censor  acts  as  a  sort  of 
restraint  upon  our  simply  and  openly  carrying  out  the  wishes 
of  the  archaic  and  infantile  Unconscious  within  us,  and  not 
only  prevents  us  from  doing  things  that  would  be  detrimental 
to  the  unity  and  best  development  of  the  social  system  in  which 
we  live,  but  in  the  more  civilised  communities  prevents  us  from 
even  thinking  such  wishes  consciously.  The  success  of  this 
effort  of  restraint  is  seen  in  the  fact  that  civilised  persons  have 
so  few  crassly  immoral  dreams.  The  work  of  the  censor  is  so 
complete  that  the  immoral,  that  is  to  say  unsocial,  nature  of  the 
wishes  constantly  striving  for  utterance  is  absolutely  hidden  by 
him  from  the  dreamer's  conscious  life,  and  can  be  revealed 
only  by  psychoanalytic  research. 


DREAMS  151 

all  the  time  unconsciously  striving  for,  no  matter 
what  his  conscious  ideals  may  be  when  expressed 
in  words.  The  reason  why  our  dreams  are  so 
whimsical,  so  nonsensical,  so  bizarre,  so  appar- 
ently inconsequential,  is  that  the  true  nature  of 
the  wishes  which  are  the  substratum  of  all  our 
conscious  activities  is  such  that  it  is  almost  never 
acceptable  to  the  conscious  part  of  ourselves,  and 
is  therefore  under  the  necessity  of  being  very 
much  changed  before  it  is  presented  to  conscious- 
ness. This  changing  is  the  work  of  the  so-called 
endopsychic  censor,  and  produces  a  series  of  pic- 
tures which  are  but  symbols  of  the  wishes  in 
which  the  dream  originated. 

The  result  of  the  dream  analysis  is  to  replace 
almost  every  picture  in  the  dream  as  we  remem- 
ber it  with  others.  The  first  set  of  pictures  mak- 
ing up  the  dream  as  we  remember  it  is  called  the 
manifest  content  of  the  dream.  The  new  set  of 
pictures,  to  carry  out  this  pictorial  metaphor, 
which  is  arrived  at  by  means  of  the  dream  analysis, 
is  called  the  latent  content.  It  is  this  latent  con- 
tent which  is  clearly  significant  of  our  uncon- 
scious trends.  It  is  not  to  be  understood  by  this 
that  the  latent  content  of  the  dream  is  something 
fixed  that  can  be  developed  by  the  chemical  action, 
so  to  speak,  of  the  analysis,  like  the  developing 
fluid  with  which  we  produce  a  photographic  nega- 
tive. The  process  of  interpretation  is  a  very 


152   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

long  and  complicated  one  and  the  result  is  never 
complete.  Some  dreams  are  indeed  not  analysable 
at  all.  An  interpretation  can  be  inferred,  from 
the  general  knowledge  that  the  analyst  may  have 
at  his  disposal,  from  his  greater  or  less  experi- 
ence, and  there  is  a  class  of  dreams  that  are 
called  typical  dreams  because  they  are  dreamed 
in  almost  the  same  way  by  a  great  many  people. 
These  typical  dreams  are  therefore  likely  to  have 
the  same  interpretation  for  all  people  who  dream 
them,  though  the  exact  application  is  different  in 
different  cases. 

The  dream  of  the  burglar  given  above  may  be 
taken  as  an  example  of  the  difference  between 
the  latent  content  and  the  manifest  content  of  any 
dream.  In  this  case  the  manifest  content  is  the 
dream  exactly  as  it  was  related,  while  what  was 
latent  in  it,  and  what  was  brought  out  in  the  very 
brief  conversation  which  took  place  concerning  it, 
was  that  there  was  a  desire  on  the  part  of  the 
dreamer  to  accomplish  something  that  would  have 
a  great  effect  upon  other  people.  The  greatest 
effect  that  one  could  have  upon  the  life  of  other 
people  would  naturally  be  the  greatest  change 
that  could  be  wrought  upon  another  and  the  great- 
est change  that  can  happen  to  life  is  to  be  changed 
into  its  opposite,  death,  so  that  the  latent  content 
of  this  dream,  or  at  any  rate  a  part  of  the  latent 
content,  is  here  indicated.  The  dreamer  is  dis- 


DREAMS  153 

satisfied  with  the  effectiveness  of  his  performances 
in  his  professional  life  and  dreams  of  something 
that  is  as  far  removed  as  possible  from  the  desul- 
tory nature  of  his  everyday  occupations. 

Another  illustration  of  the  difference  between 
the  manifest  content  and  the  latent  content  is 
found  in  the  dreams  of  Pharaoh,  in  the  Bible, 
which  were  interpreted  by  Joseph.  In  this  case 
the  interpretation  consisted  almost  solely  of  the 
translation  of  the  manifest  content  into  the  latent 
content.  '  The  seven  good  kine  are  seven  years; 
and  the  seven  good  ears  are  seven  years:  the 
dream  is  one.  And  the  seven  thin  and  ill  favoured 
kine  that  came  up  after  them  are  seven  years;  and 
the  seven  empty  ears  blasted  with  the  east  wind 
shall  be  seven  years  of  famine." 

This  is  again  an  interpretation  of  a  dream  with- 
out any  recourse  to  analysis,  the  analysis  of  the 
dream  being  the  contribution  of  modern  science 
to  the  knowledge  of  dreams.  It  will  be  noted  that 
the  interpretation  of  dreams,  as  practised  by  as- 
trologers and  charlatans,  contains  no  study  of  the 
mental  processes  of  the  dreamer,  but  that  the 
modern  dream  theory  discussed  here  starts  with 
the  mental  content  of  the  dreamer,  as  indicated 
in  cross-section  by  the  free  associations  of  the 
dreamer  suggested  by  the  dream. 

I  will  give  here  a  dream  in  which  the  first  asso- 
ciation gave  the  clue  to  the  latent  content.  The 


154   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

dreamer  relates  his  dream  as  follows :  "  I  seem  to 
be  with  Tolstoy  in  Siberia.  Am  in  a  small  room 
looking  out  through  a  door  into  a  court  and  hear 
Tolstoy  trying  to  make  someone  understand  over 
the  telephone.  He  yells  at  the  telephone,  but 
gets  no  satisfaction  and  comes  in  where  I  am.  I 
offer  to  get  his  mail  for  him  when  I  go  to  Vol- 
hyniansk.  He  says  some  Russian  in  a  very  soft 
and  pleasant  way  and  I  do  not  understand  it, 
though  I  seem  to  know  what  he  means."  The  first 
association  with  this  dream  was  Leo,  then  lion, 
then  father.  As  this  was  a  dream  of  a  patient 
who  was  being  analysed,  and  was  communicated 
to  the  physician  and  worked  out  in  his  presence 
some  seven  months  after  the  beginning  of  the 
treatment,  the  reference  to  father  may  be  easily 
understood.  The  physician  in  such  a  case  gen- 
erally takes  the  place  in  the  Unconscious  of  the 
patient  which  the  father  took  in  the  childhood  of 
the  patient, — that  is,  a  position  of  authority  and 
direction  of  activities, — and  this  dream,  like  others 
that  have  been  dreamed  by  patients,  is  in  effect  a 
sort  of  protest  of  the  Unconscious  against  the 
obscurities  of  some  parts  of  the  psychoanalytic 
treatment.  The  dreamer  says  to  the  analyser  in 
this  dream :  u  You  are  talking  a  foreign  language 
to  me.  More  than  that,  it  is  almost  as  bad  as  if 
you  were  talking  Russian  to  me  over  the  tele- 
phone. You  are  very  pleasant  to  me  personally, 


DREAMS  155 

but  to  my  Unconscious,  which  you  seem  to  be  try- 
ing to  get  in  communication  with  by  telephone,  you 
are  extremely  impolite,  not  to  say  savage.  If  you 
would  come  down  a  bit  from  your  lofty  position 
as  an  authority  and  even  talk  your  native  language 
to  me  directly,  I  should  at  any  rate  seem  to  under- 
stand." 

The  difference  between  the  manifest  content  of 
the  dream  and  its  latent  content  may  be  amusingly 
illustrated  by  means  of  the  following  quatrains 
contributed  by  Deems  Taylor  to  the  Century 
Magazine  in  1912. 

Ape  Owe  'Em 

When  fur  stews  can  this  sill  leer  I'm 

Toot  rye  tomb  ache  theme  e'en  ink  Lear, 

Youth  inked  wood  butt  bee  weigh  sting  thyme; 
Use  eh,  "  It's  imp  lean  on  scents  shear!  " 

Gnome  attar;  Anna  lies  align! 

Nation  mice  lender  verse  says  knot — 
Fork  rip  tick  poet  real  Ike  mine, 

How  Aaron  weal,  demesnes  allot. 

This  bit  of  humour  shows  in  a  number  of  ways 
the  relation  between  the  dream  and  waking  life. 
First  of  all  it  is  immediately  comprehensible  to  a 
person  hearing  it  read  aloud  by  another  person, 


156    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

which  shows  that  its  cryptic  appearance  is  due 
largely  to  the  same  causes  that  make  the  dream 
unintelligible  at  first  sight, — namely,  that  it  is 
taken  at  first  glance  as  a  real  visual  entity.  Of 
course  the  effort  to  make  sense  out  of  it  from  the 
purely  visual  point  of  view  is  useless.  It  needs 
to  be  rearranged  into  an  auditory  series.  Then 
the  sense  of  the  verses  becomes  clear  at  once. 
And  just  as  the  purely  auditory  apperception  of  it 
by  a  second  person  renders  it  comprehensible  to 
that  person,  while  it  still  remains  obscure  or  non- 
sensical to  the  one  who  is  looking  at  it  and  is  mis- 
led by  the  different  spelling  of  the  same  sounds, 
so  the  dream,  as  a  predominantly  visual  thing, 
necessarily  deceives  the  dreamer,  and  he  needs  the 
different  point  of  view  of  a  second  person  to  re- 
arrange the  elements,  all  of  which,  to  be  sure,  are 
in  themselves  reproductions  of  realities  (English 
words  in  the  verses)  and  might  make  sense  if  used 
in  other  connections,  but  are  illogical  as  they  occur 
in  the  dream,  just  as  are  the  separate  words  in 
the  verses.  In  the  case  of  the  dream  the  second 
person  is  the  analyser.  It  is  impossible  for  an 
ordinary  uninitiated  person  to  interpret  his  own 
dreams;  it  is  only  after  he  has  learned  the  special 
methods  of  unravelling  the  condensations  and  dis- 
placements and  other  transformations  to  which 
the  dream  has  been  subjected  by  the  activity  of  the 
censor  that  he  can  begin  to  be  an  interpreter  of  his 


DREAMS  157 

own  dreams.  It  is  not  the  purpose  of  the  present 
writer  to  go  into  the  details  of  such  unravelling, 
but  merely  to  indicate  the  nature  of  the  process. 
Thus  the  dream  has  to  be  studied  in  the  greatest 
detail  to  find  out  what  it  really  means  to  the 
dreamer.  Just  as  the  words  "  Gnome  attar  "  in 
the  second  quatrain  are  immediately  understood 
if  the  same  sounds  are  spelled  "  No  matter,"  so 
the  several  elements  of  the  dream,  whether  they 
are  pictures  or  words,  must  be  examined  com- 
paratively, and  their  relations  to  each  other  and 
to  the  dreamer  ascertained  by  a  study  of  the  men- 
tal material  of  the  dreamer  as  exhaustive  as 
it  is  possible  to  make.  The  difference  in  accent 
between  the  words  "  Ape  Owe  'Em "  and  "  A 
Poem  "  illustrates  the  difference  between  that  part 
of  the  manifest  content  and  the  latent  content  of 
the  dream  which  is  produced  by  the  displacement. 
Just  as  the  stress  accent  of  these  two  phrases 
differs  in  pronunciation,  so  does  the  emotional  ac- 
cent of  the  latent  content  of  the  dream  differ  from 
that  of  the  manifest  content,  inasmuch  as  elements 
which  in  the  latent  content  are  of  the  greatest 
possible  importance  are  represented  in  the  dream 
frequently  by  elements  to  which  no  importance 
can  be  assigned. 

The  manifest  content  of  the  dream  has  been 
produced  by  four  main  processes  which  are  called 
condensation,  displacement,  dramatisation  and 


158    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

secondary  elaboration.  The  process  of  condensa- 
tion implies  that  each  element  of  the  dream  is  like 
the  composite  photographs  which  are  made  by 
exposing  the  plate  or  film  to  a  number  of  persons 
and  getting  a  combination  photograph  in  which  all 
the  similarities  are  emphasised  and  the  differences 
are  more  faintly  registered. 

In  illustration  of  the  work  of  condensation 
Freud,  in  his  book  on  the  Interpretation  of 
Dreams,  gives  the  following  which  was  dreamed 
by  himself: 

"  I  have  written  a  monograph  on  a  species  of 
plants.  The  book  lies  before  me ;  I  am  just  turn- 
ing an  inserted  coloured  plate.  Near  the  illus- 
tration is  fastened  a  dried  specimen  of  the  plant." 

The  circumstances  which  were  condensed  in 
order  to  form  the  manifest  content  of  the  dream 
as  here  given  were,  among  others,  these:  In  the 
the  window  of  a  bookstore  he  had  seen  the  day 
before  a  monograph  on  the  cyclamen ;  he  had  him- 
self once  written  a  monograph  on  cocaine,  which 
was  associated  in  his  mind  with  a  conversation  with 
a  Dr.  K.  the  previous  evening,  which  he  considers 
the  actual  dream  instigator.  Botanical  mono- 
graph is  connected  in  his  mind  with  a  Professor 
Gardner,  his  blooming  wife,  with  a  patient  named 
Flora,  and  with  a  lady  to  whom  he  had  told  a 
story  about  some  forgotten  flowers.  Monograph 
is  associated  with  the  one-sidedness  of  his  profes- 


DREAMS  159 

sional  studies  and  the  fondness  he  had  for  collect- 
ing monographs  and  making  collections  of  other 
kinds.  The  cyclamen  was  his  wife's  favourite 
flower.  It  will  be  seen  by  this  example  that  the 
botanical  monograph  is,  as  it  were,  a  condensation 
of  a  number  of  realities  and  thoughts.  This  com- 
posite character  of  each  particular  factor  of  the 
manifest  content  of  the  dream  is  expressed  in 
other  terms  by  saying  that  the  factors  are  "  over- 
determined."  This  does  not  mean  that  they  are 
superfluously  determined  or  caused  by  an  over- 
plus of  unconscious  factors,  but  that  each  element 
of  the  manifest  content  of  the  dream  is,  like  every 
other  manifestation  of  the  Unconscious,  produced 
not  by  one  assignable  cause  but  by  a  number  of 
causes.  Over-determination  means,  therefore,  not 
superfluous  determination  but  multiple  determina- 
tion. This  is  true  of  practically  every  dream,  and 
the  dream  analysis  consists  of  the  free  associa- 
tions connected  with  the  topics  of  the  dream,  as 
these  associations  are  evoked  at  the  time.  This 
is  for  the  purpose  of  separating  out  the  several 
elements  which  were  condensed  to  form  each 
factor  in  the  manifest  content.  From  the  ele- 
ments thus  separated  out  there  emerge  the 
thoughts  expressive  of  the  unconscious  trend  which 
it  is  desired  to  discover. 

The  second  change  mentioned  as  characterising 
the  transition  from  the  latent  to  the  manifest  con- 


160  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

tent  of  the  dream  is  the  displacement.  This  re- 
sults in  a  change  such  that  some  circumstances 
which  in  real  life  are  considered  of  the  greatest 
importance  are,  in  the  dream,  given  a  minor  part 
to  play,  while  things  that  in  our  waking  life  are 
thought  of  as  the  merest  trivialities  are  given  the 
most  prominent  place.  The  result  of  this,  as  may 
well  be  seen,  is  to  turn  the  values  of  ordinary 
life  quite  upside  down,  and  necessarily  gives  many 
dreams  the  appearance  of  being  the  purest  non- 
sense. Thus,  in  the  dream  of  Tolstoy  the  remote- 
ness of  Siberia  and  the  foreign  element  of  the 
Russian  author  were  possibly  produced  for  the 
purpose  of  escaping  the  vigilance  of  the  censor, 
who  would  not  have  allowed  the  biting  criticism 
of  the  methods  of  the  analyser  to  be  openly  ex- 
pressed. They  were  admitted  to  consciousness 
only  by  way  of  a  complete  transmutation  into 
images  that  were  merely  symbolical  of  the  original 
dream  thoughts. 

After  recognising  in  the  dream  the  latent  con- 
tent and  the  manifest  content  which  has  been  made 
out  of  the  dream  thoughts  that  constituted  the 
latent  content,  and  seeing  how  the  manifest  con- 
tent, or  the  dream  as  it  appears  to  us  when  we 
remember  it  upon  awaking,  has  been  formed  by 
the  processes  of  condensation  and  displacement, 
we  are  now  obliged  to  consider  a  third  factor  in. 
the  process  of  dream  formation,  a  process  to  which 


DREAMS  161 

has  been  given  the  name  of  secondary  elabora- 
tion. In  many  dreams  there  occurs  the  thought, 
"  Why,  this  is  only  a  dream,"  particularly  in  some 
types  of  unpleasant  dreams,  where  this  idea  seems 
to  be  in  the  nature  of  a  double  reassurance.  On 
the  one  hand  we  are  reassured  that  the  unpleasant 
features  of  the  dream  are  not  real,  and  on  the 
other  hand  we  are  assured  that  we  may  go  on 
sleeping.  This  is  regarded  as  an  instance  of  the 
contribution  from  the  conscious  life  to  the  forma- 
tion of  the  dream,  and  is  taken  as  a  good  example 
of  the  way  in  which  the  dream  is  worked  out 
from  the  point  of  view  of  consciousness,  or  as  the 
secondary  elaboration  of  the  dream.  The  primary 
elaboration  would  be  the  working  of  the  exclu- 
sively unconscious  factors  which  have,  as  it  were, 
prepared  the  dream  for  delivery  into  conscious- 
ness. But  the  condition  in  which  it  is  presented 
for  acceptance  into  the  conscious  life  is  so  foreign 
to  the  mode  of  thinking  of  conscious  life,  on 
account  of  the  changes  that  have  been  wrought 
in  the  original  dream  material  by  the  processes  of 
condensation  and  displacement,  that  our  conscious 
mind  is  obliged  to  change  it  still  further  in  order 
to  make  it  clear  enough  to  be  remembered.  This 
process  of  secondary  elaboration  is  somewhat 
analogous  to  the  change  in  an  idea  made  by  pre- 
senting it  in  the  form  of  words  after  it  has  been 
originally  presented  in  the  form  of  a  picture.  It 


1 62   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

might  almost  be  said  that  the  difference  between^ 
our  dream  as  we  really  saw  it  and  as  we  remember 
and  recount  it  is  like  the  difference  between  a 
picture  and  the  verbal  description  of  a  picture. 
The  picture  is  one  thing  to  the  person  who  is  look- 
ing at  it,  but  quite  a  different  thing  to  the  person 
who  merely  reads  a  verbal  description  of  it.  This 
is  due  in  part  to  the  various  associations  that  the 
words  of  the  description  may  have  in  the  mind 
of  the  reader.  It  is  quite  similar  in  the  case  of 
a  dream  that  I  am  trying  to  narrate,  even  to  my- 
self. If  we  regard  the  dream  as  the  work  partly 
of  the  Unconscious,  and  if  we  remember  what  has 
already  been  said  about  the  origin  of  ideas  in 
general  from  the  Unconscious,  it  will  be  easy  to 
see  that  the  words  in  which  I  communicate  my 
dream  to  another  person,  as  well  as  the  words 
in  which  I  even  attempt  to  account  for  it  to  myself, 
are  supplied  to  me  also  by  the  Unconscious.  So 
that  even  in  the  act  of  putting  the  dream  into 
words,  no  matter  for  what  purpose,  there  is  a 
deflection,  so  to  speak,  given  to  the  account  by 
the  Unconscious.  The  account  of  the  dream  is 
more  or  less  under  the  control  of  the  Titan,  just 
as  the  dream  itself  is.  We  may  say,  therefore, 
not  only  that  we  dream  the  dream,  but  that  in  a 
certain  sense  we  dream  the  words  in  which  we 
narrate  the  dream.  This  applies  not  only  to  the 
words  that  actually  appear  as  a  part  of  the 


DREAMS  163 

dream,  such  as  the  name  Volhyniansk  in  the  dream 
of  Tolstoy  given  above,  but  also  to  the  words 
that  are  "  selected  "  for  narrating  or  describing 
the  various  episodes  of  the  dream.  Frequently, 
indeed,  the  words  so  "  selected  "  seem  even  to 
the  dreamer  ridiculously  inappropriate.  The 
dreamer  often  says  that  the  words  he  has  used  are 
unsuitable,  but  that  he  cannot  think  of  better  ones. 
Or  he  has  the  feeling  that  a  figure  in  the  dream 
may  be  a  man,  or  it  may  be  a  woman,  but  he  is  not 
sure  which;  he  said  a  man,  but  thinks  that  prob- 
ably a  woman  was  what  he  really  meant  to  say. 
This  state  of  mind  shows  the  unconscious  factor 
which  is  so  large  in  the  formation  of  the  dream 
still  acting  in  the  account  of  the  dream. 

When  I  spoke  above  of  the  words  being 
selected  to  describe  the  dream,  the  question  natu- 
rally arose  as  to  who  selected  them.  The  narrator 
of  the  dream  selected  them,  of  course.  But  what 
part  of  him  selected  the  words?  The  unconscious 
part  of  him.  The  same  element  in  his  nature 
which  supplied  the  pictures  of  his  dream  also 
supplied  the  words  with  which  to  describe  them. 
This  seems  the  more  natural  as  many  dreams  that 
are  written  out  as  soon  as  the  dreamer  wakes, 
and  are  laid  by  for  a  time,  seem  entirely  foreign  to 
him  after  a  month  or  so  and  he  cannot  remember 
any  more  about  them  than  if  they  were  the  dreams 
of  some  other  person.  If  dreams  are  written  out 


1 64   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

upon  awaking  they  are  frequently  written  in  a  sort 
of  dreamy  state,  and  in  this  case  the  secondary 
elaboration  of  them  approximates  most  closely  to 
the  primary  elaboration  which  is  the  unconscious 
formation  of  them.  But  if  a  dream  is  remem- 
bered and  related  to  the  analyser  after  a  lapse  of 
some  hours  it  has  had  time  to  crystallise  into  a 
definite  form  which  is  kept  constant  more  or  less 
by  means  of  the  words  in  which  it  is  cast.  If  it 
is  not  put  into  words  except  at  the  time  of  the 
analysis,  it  takes  a  form  which  may  change,  if  a 
repetition  of  it  is  requested  by  the  analyser  upon 
a  subsequent  occasion.  Freud  has  with  great  in- 
sight pointed  out  that  the  discrepancies  which  thus 
creep  into  the  account  are  sometimes  of  the  great- 
est service  in  giving  a  clue  to  the  most  important 
meaning  of  the  dream.  It  is  believed  that  a  sec- 
ond narration  of  the  same  dream  which  omits 
some  of  the  details  of  the  first  narration  leaves 
these  out  on  the  same  principle  on  which  things 
are  forgotten  generally, — namely,  that  those 
things  are  most  readily  forgotten  which  are  asso- 
ciated in  the  mind  of  the  individual  with  occur- 
rences that  are  unpleasant  to  him.  These  factors 
of  the  dream  which  in  a  first  narrative  are  present 
and  which  are  lacking  in  a  second  account  are 
thus  thought  to  be  an  indication  of  what  the  Un- 
conscious is  trying  to  conceal,  and  therefore  to  be 
a  clue  to  what  is  most  desirable  to  bring  to  light 


DREAMS  165 

and  have  the  emotions  connected  with  them 
worked  off  in  the  wholesome  atmosphere  of 
psychoanalytic  procedure. 

Freud  regards  the  secondary  elaboration  as  a 
contribution  made  by  the  waking  thought  to  the 
formation  of  the  dream,  and  that  the  censor  is 
regularly  a  sharer  in  the  work  of  the  dream 
formation  (I.e.,  p.  350).  The  result  of  this  co- 
operation of  the  conscious  in  the  making  of  the 
dream  is  to  change  the  dream  in  the  direction  of 
a  more  rational  occurrence,  more  like  the  experi- 
ences of  waking  life  than  it  would  be  otherwise. 
The  secondary  elaboration  therefore  is  effected 
largely  in  accordance  with  the  laws  which  govern 
the  familiar  process  of  day-dreaming  or  reverie. 
A  careful  examination  of  the  elements  of  the 
dream  sometimes  leaves  us  in  considerable  doubt 
as  to  whether  the  elements  of  the  dream,  or  at 
least  some  of  them,  are  not  entirely  supplied 
directly  from  the  conscious  life  from  this  very 
source  of  day-dreams,  so  that  it  is  said  of  some 
dreams  that  they  have  first  been  dreamed  in  the 
daytime  and  have  then  been  brought  to  fuller  con- 
sciousness in  the  dreams  of  the  night.  The  rapid- 
ity of  some  dreams  is  thus  explained.  Freud 
cites  a  dream  of  a  dramatist,  who,  during  the  first 
few  lines  of  the  play,  at  which  he  fell  asleep  for 
a  couple  of  minutes  in  his  chair  behind  the  scenes, 
dreamed  that  the  play  had  been  played  through, 


i66  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

the  proper  places  enthusiastically  applauded  and 
the  whole  thing  a  grand  success.  He  also  notes 
(p.  357)  that  in  the  case  of  some  dreams  we  can- 
not be  sure  that  what  we  remember  about  them  is 
what  was  really  dreamed  or  not.  Finally,  he  be- 
lieves that  a  number  of  dreams  are  so  faultlessly 
logical  in  their  form  that  it  is  evident  that  they 
have  been  completely  worked  over  by  the  con- 
scious part  of  the  psyche.  Such  dreams  are  to  be 
regarded,  -or  at  any  rate  the  apparent  interpreta- 
tion of  them  is  to  be  regarded,  with  suspicion, 
because  they  do  not  really  in  this  case  say  what 
they  appear  to  say,  any  more  than  the  extremely 
nonsensical  dreams  do.* 

A  dream  is  thus  seen  to  be  not  a  fixed  product 
that  has  a  definite  and  unalterable  form,  but  a 
living  thing,  which  may  go  on  developing  if  more 
attention  is  given  to  it,  and  the  secondary  elabora- 
tion of  it  is  seen  to  be  that  part  of  it  which  de- 
velops generally  after  the  dreamer  has  waked, 
and  its  extent  is  seen  to  be  governed  by  the  greater 
or  less  proximity  to  the  sleeping  state  on  the  part 
of  the  person  narrating  the  dream.  The  dream 
occurs  in  sleep  and  the  secondary  elaboration  of 
it  takes  place  in  transferring  it  from  the  sleep- 
ing state  to  the  waking  state. 

•Freud  (Traumdeutung,  p.  459)  says:  "We  have  called  the 
dream  absurd,  but  examples  teach  us  how  clever  the  dream  is 
in  making  itself  absurd." 


DREAMS  167 

An  important  consideration  in  the  study  of 
dreams  is  the  fact  that  the  material  at  the  dis- 
posal of  the  Unconscious  for  making  the  dream 
is  primarily  visual.  We  rarely  dream  except  in 
pictures.  We  see  things  in  dreams.  Vision  is 
sometimes  a  synonym  for  dream.  Very  infre- 
quently do  we  dream  words,  and  almost  never  do 
we  dream  smells  or  tastes.  The  primarily  visual 
nature  of  the  dream  calls,  then,  for  a  characteristic 
of  dream  formation  which  has  been  called  "  re- 
gard for  presentability "  or  "  dramatisation." 
The  ideas  that  are  more  abstract  therefore  are 
not  as  such  presentable  in  dream  form,  so  that  if 
the  Unconscious  wishes  for  instance  to  express  the 
idea  of  criticism,  it  has  to  do  so  by  means  of 
representing  a  man  talking  a  foreign  language,  as 
in  the  dream  about  Tolstoy  talking  Russian  over 
the  telephone,  or  about  "  a  man  dressed  in  a 
Roman  toga,  talking  Chinese,  and  preaching  a 
Hebrew  religion."  Similarly  a  dream  cannot 
represent  "  IF,"  but  instead  represents  what  might 
be  as  actually  occurring. 

The  effect  of  our  daily  life  upon  our  dreams 
is  expressed  as  follows:  "The  thought  activities 
continue  in  sleep,  not  only  those  that  are  not  fin- 
ished on  account  of  an  accidental  interruption,  but 
also  those  that  are  not  settled  because  we  have 
exhausted  upon  them,  problems  of  various  kinds, 
all  our  thinking  powers  for  the  time  being,  and 


168   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

those  matters  that  in  waking  moments  are  rejected 
or  repressed,  together  with  matters  that  are  quite 
indifferent  and  therefore  do  not  require  any  con- 
scious mental  effort."  "  The  residue  of  the  day's 
impressions  furnishes  a  copious  contribution  to  the 
dream,  and  it  is  by  their  means  that  the  content 
of  the  dream  finally  pushes  its  way  into  our 
consciousness.  The  unassorted  experiences  of  the 
past  day  occasionally  dominate  the  content  of  the 
dream,  and  cause  it  to  continue  the  day's  work; 
they  may  have  any  other  nature  whatsoever  besides 
that  of  being  a  wish,  and  there  is  a  whole  class  of 
dreams  which  originate  predominantly  or  exclus- 
ively in  the  residues  of  the  daily  life."  Some  factors, 
therefore,  of  every  dream  are  likely  to  be  directly 
traceable  to  the  experiences  of  the  previous  day. 
With  regard  to  the  part  played  in  the  formation 
of  the  dream  by  the  wish-fulfilment,  it  may  be  said 
that  "  some  dreams,  as  those  of  children,  are  evi- 
dently wish-fulfilment  dreams,  while  the  others  are 
wish-fulfilment  dreams  that  have  been  disguised  in 
every  possible  way."  (Freud,  Traumdeutung,  p. 

435-) 

With  regard  to  the  status  of  the  wish  in  the 
dream,  it  is  said  that  "  the  wish  may  be  stirred  up 
during  the  day,  and  remain  for  the  night  as  a 
recognised  and  unsatisfied  desire,  or  it  may  have 
occurred  by  day  but  have  been  denied,  remaining 
for  the  night  likewise  an  unsatisfied  but  repressed 


DREAMS  169 

desire,  or  it  may  have  no  connection  with  daily 
life  and  be  one  of  those  wishes  which  become 
active  only  at  night  because  they  belong  to  the 
repressed  matter  of  the  Unconscious"  (p.  433). 

"  The  conscious  wish,  on  the  other  hand,  be- 
comes a  dream  instigator  only  if  it  succeeds  in 
arousing  a  cooperating  unconscious  element  by 
which  it  is  reinforced." 

Furthermore  "  the  wish  represented  in  dreams 
is  inevitably  an  infantile  wish"  (p.  435).  This 
accounts  for  the  necessity  of  the  dream's  being 
apparently  so  trivial  and  bizarre,  because  the  na- 
ture of  the  infantile  wish  is  such  that  it  is  most 
contrary  to  the  restrictions  placed  upon  us  by 
society,  and  has  to  be  very  much  changed  in  ap- 
pearance in  order  to  get  by  the  censor. 

Freud  gives  (Traumdeutung,  p.  440)  an  ac- 
count of  the  psychical  nature  of  the  wish,  as  he 
understands  it.  "  There  is  no  doubt  that  the 
psychical  mechanism  has  attained  its  present  per- 
fection only  by  passing  through  a  long  evolution. 
Let  us  imagine  it  in  an  earlier  stage  of  its  efficiency 
before  it  has  been  so  elaborately  developed. 
Presuppositions  that  are  based  on  other  considera- 
tions tell  us  that  the  mechanism  above  all  makes 
the  effort  to  keep  itself  as  free  as  possible  from 
stimulation,  and  for  that  purpose  assumes  as  its 
first  form  that  of  a  reflex  mechanism  which  al- 
lowed it  immediately  to  transfer  to  a  motor  path 


170   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

any  sense  stimulus  that  reached  it.  But  the  neces- 
sity of  life  disturbed  this  simple  function,  and 
produced  the  impulse  to  the  further  complication 
of  the  mechanism.  The  necessity  of  life  occurs  to 
it  first  in  the  form  of  the  great  bodily  needs.  The 
excitation  set  up  by  the  inner  need  will  seek  an 
outlet  in  motility,  and  may  be  described  as  an 
'  inner  transmutation  '  or  as  the  '  expression  of 
affective  process.'  The  hungry  child  will  cry  or 
kick  helplessly.  But  the  situation  remains  un- 
changed, for  the  excitation  proceeding  from  the 
inner  need  corresponds  not  to  a  momentarily  push- 
ing but  to  a  continually  acting  power.  A  change 
can  take  place  only  if  in  some  way  by  means  of 
some  external  aid  coming  to  the  child  a  satisfac- 
tion is  found  to  remove  the  inner  excitation.  An 
essential  constituent  of  this  experience  is  the 
appearance  of  a  certain  perception  (in  the  ex- 
ample, food)  whose  memory-image  remains  asso- 
ciated from  this  time  on  with  the  trace  of  the 
memory  of  the  excitation  of  the  need.  The  next 
time  this  need  arises,  there  will  result,  thanks  to 
the  connection  that  has  been  established,  a  psy- 
chical activity  which  will  again  fill  out  the  memory- 
image  of  that  perception,  recall  the  perception 
itself  and  therefore  exactly  reproduce  the  situa- 
tion of  the  first  satisfaction.  Such  an  activity  as 
that  is  what  we  call  a  wish,  the  reproduction  of 
the  perception  is  the  fulfilment  of  the  wish  and 


DREAMS  171 

the  complete  revival  (or  filling  out)  of  the  per- 
ception from  the  point  of  view  of  the  excitation 
of  the  need  is  the  shortest  route  to  the  fulfilment 
of  the  wish.  It  is  no  obstacle  to  us  to  suppose  that 
there  is  a  primitive  state  of  the  psychical  mechan- 
ism in  which  this  route  is  actually  so  traversed, 
and  the  wish  therefore  turns  into  a  hallucination. 
So  this  first  psychical  activity  aims  at  an  identity 
of  perception;  namely,  at  the  repetition  of  the 
perception  which  is  connected  with  the  satisfac- 
tion of  that  desire. 

"  Thinking  in  general  is  nothing  but  the  sub- 
stitute for  an  hallucinatory  wish,  and  it  is  quite 
comprehensible  that  the  dream  is  a  wish-fulfil- 
ment, as  nothing  but  a  wish  can  drive  our  mental 
activity  to  work.  The  dream  which  fulfils  its 
wishes  in  a  short  regressive  way  has  in  so  doing 
only  preserved  for  us  a  proof  of  the  mode  of 
operation  of  the  psychical  mechanism  which  is 
primordial  and  has  been  given  up  as  being  ill 
adapted  to  its  end.  In  the  night  there  appears  as 
an  exile  what  used  to  dominate  our  daily  life  at 
one  time,  when  the  psychic  life  was  still  young 
and  incompetent,  somewhat  as  in  the  nursery  we 
find  again  the  bow  and  arrow,  the  abandoned 
weapons  of  a  stage  of  humanity  now  outgrown. 
Dreaming  is  a  piece  of  infantile  mental  life  that 
has  been  overcome.  In  the  psychoses  these  modes 
of  operation  of  the  psychic  mechanisms,  elsewhere 


172 

in  waking  life  suppressed,  are  again  forced  into 
currency,  and  then  bring  to  light  their  unsuitability 
to  satisfy  our  needs  in  the  direction  of  the  outer 
world." 

The  dream  is  the  chief  means  by  which  we  may 
penetrate  deeply  into  the  Unconscious.  Freud 
calls  it  the  royal  road  to  the  Unconscious.  The 
first  call  on  the  part  of  the  psychoanalyst  is  for 
the  dreams  of  his  subject.  From  them,  through 
his  knowledge  of  the  processes  which  distort  the 
dream  into  its  manifest  content,  he  learns  the  true 
condition  of  the  psyche  in  its  relation  to  the  ideal 
psychical  development  and  can  cause  the  subject  to 
see  the  multiform  manners  in  which  the  Uncon- 
scious has  deceived  him.  Far  from  being  non- 
sensical the  dream  has  been  shown  to  be  incapable 
of  either  nonsense  or  untruth,  if  the  symbolic 
language  in  which  it  is  necessarily  expressed  is 
rightly  understood  and  translated  into  the  lan- 
guage of  conscious  life. 

The  method  of  inference  both  as  to  the  existence 
and  the  nature  of  the  Unconscious  and  as  to  the 
significance  of  its  several  manifestations  in  dreams 
and  in  other  hitherto  unconsidered  ways  such  as 
errors  of  speech  and  the  sudden  ideas  that  unac- 
countably pop  into  our  heads  is  well  illustrated 
by  the  anecdote  related  by  Thackeray  in  his 
Roundabout  Paper :  "  On  Being  Found,Out." 

"  You  remember  that  old  story  of  the  Abbe 


DREAMS  173 

Kakatoes,  who  told  the  company  at  supper  one 
night  how  the  first  confession  he  ever  received  was 
— from  a  murderer,  let  us  say.  Presently  enters 
to  supper  the  Marquis  de  Croquemitaine.  '  Pal- 
sambleu,  abbe,'  says  the  brilliant  marquis,  taking 
a  pinch  of  snuff,  '  are  you  here  ?  Gentlemen  and 
ladies !  I  was  the  abbe's  first  penitent,  and  I  made 
him  a  confession  which  I  promise  you  astonished 
him.'  " 

Just  as  the  statement  of  either  the  abbe  or  the 
marquis  alone  is  absolutely  inadequate  to  prove 
the  latter  a  murderer,  so  the  manifestations  of 
the  Unconscious  are  unified  only  by  a  similar  com- 
parative method,  the  significance  of  the  dream  is 
shown  only  after  comparing  it  with  the  thoughts 
that  are  associated  with  it,  and  the  "  symp- 
tomatic "  character  of  certain  physical  manner- 
isms is  inferred  only  by  comparing  them  with 
other  outcroppings  of  the  Unconscious  into  con- 
scious life. 

No  account  of  the  interpretation  of  dreams 
would  be  complete  without  a  reference  to  the  de- 
velopment of  the  theory  of  Freud  contributed  by 
C.  G.  Jung  of  Zurich.  Not  satisfied  with  the 
materialistic  interpretations  put  upon  dreams  by 
Freud,  Jung  thinks  that  they  have  not  merely  a 
retrospective  meaning,  but  have  a  meaning  for  the 
present  and  a  value  for  the  future.  Freud  is 
criticised  by  Jung  for  tracing  too  much  of  the 


174   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

dream  back  to  the  period  of  infancy,  and  to  ex- 
clusively sexual  causes.  This  gives  it  a  meaning 
which  is  of  less  value.  It  would  be  merely  dis- 
heartening to  be  obliged  to  regard  the  dream 
solely  as  an  indication  that  the  Unconscious  is 
crassly  material  in  its  strivings,  for  it  would  then 
never  be  able  to  help  man  toward  any  form  of 
idealisation.  Jung  therefore  sees  in  the  dream 
not  only  a  psychic  product  absolutely  determined 
by  preceding  causes  in  the  strictly  scientific  sense 
of  today,  but  regards  the  dream  as  an  aspiration 
toward  a  higher  form  of  intellectual  and  spiritual 
life. 

Thus  the  dream  about  Tolstoy  given  above 
may  be  said  to  contain  not  only  the  dreamer's 
protest  which  would  be  an  infantile  craving  for 
superiority  in  criticising,  which  means  seeing  a 
better  method  of  handling  than  that  of  the  psycho- 
analyst, but  also  a  striving  after  that  better  view 
of  life.  Jung  holds  that  there  is  besides  the 
purely  animal  instincts  which  are  brought  to 
light  by  the  process  of  psychoanalysis  a  much 
greater  power  for  social  cooperation.  Comparing 
the  psychoanalytic  procedure  with  the  maieutic 
method  of  Socrates, — than  which,  however,  psy- 
choanalysis goes  much  deeper, — Jung  empha- 
sises the  very  great  social  value  of  the  newer 
method,  in  that  those  who  are  fortunate  enough 
to  have  not  only  their  baser  natures  but  their 


DREAMS  175 

greater  capacities  revealed  to  them  by  this  means 
are  provided  with  "  a  philosophy  of  life  founded 
upon  insight  and  experience  "  which  enables  them 
"  to  adapt  themselves  to  reality."  * 

*  Analytical  Psychology  (tr.  Long),  p.  376. 


CHAPTER  IX 

TWO  KINDS  OF  THINKING 

IN  the  chapter  on  dreams  we  took  up  the  con- 
sideration of  a  kind  of  mental  process  called  free 
association  in  which  the  person  who  was  doing 
the  thinking  allowed  his  thoughts  to  come  as  they 
would  and  purposely  withdrew  from  them  any 
guidance  whatever.  He  was  obliged  to  learn  the 
art  of  keeping  his  hands  off  his  own  thought,  and 
it  was  found  that  that  art  was  not  so  very  easy  to 
learn  after  all.  In  other  words,  there  is  in  the 
adult  civilised  human  a  species  of  control  or 
criticism  exercised  over  all  his  thinking,  particu- 
larly that  in  which  he  is  trying  to  think  for  an 
audience,  and  above  all  when  that  audience  con- 
sists of  one  person,  and  that  person  is  known  to 
be  receptive  to  all  the  peculiarities  of  thought 
which  may  characterise  the  person  under  investi- 
gation. The  very  thought  that  I  am  under  in- 
vestigation, and  that  defects  are  what  it  is  desired 
to  find,  naturally  makes  me  instinctively  and  un- 
consciously endeavour  to  hide  those  defects. 
Thinking  then  takes  a  form  and  a  certain  direc- 
tion which  is  determined  by  my  idea  of  what  the 
psychoanalyst  wishes  to  find  out  about  me.  It  is 

176 


TWO  KINDS  OF  THINKING       177 

almos^  impossible  for  me  not  to  imagine  what  it  is 
that  he  wishes  to  discover  in  me  and  if  it  is  much 
to  my  discredit,  I  am  but  human  if  I  try  to  conceal 
it.  And  we  saw  that  the  principal  thing  that  we 
had  to  learn  in  the  matter  of  letting  the  free 
associations  go  on  as  they  would  was  to  utter 
without  the  least  restraint  even  what  to  our  think- 
ing seemed  the  most  absurd  conceits  that  might 
come  into  our  heads.  There  are  some  things  of 
which  it  is  quite  unlikely  that  a  person  even  in  the 
privacy  of  his  own  bedroom  ever  allows  himself 
to  think.  It  is  quite  unlikely  that  a  perfect 
abandon  in  this  kind  of  reverie  ever  takes  place 
in  normal  persons,  for  they  would  think  it  but 
the  raving  of  the  insane.  Why  should  the  average 
normal  do  anything  but  shrink  from  losing  or 
throwing  away  control  of  himself  in  that  manner? 
The  vitality  of j  the  unconscious  craving  is  much 
like  a  river  that  has  been  dammed  in  order  to 
supply  water  power  to  run  mills.  If  the  dam 
shows  any  defects  it  may  be  necessary  to  take 
down  a  part  of  it,  in  order  to  repair  it.  If  the 
dam  were  all  knocked  down  at  one  instant  the 
collected  waters  would  do  much  damage  in  the 
valley  below.  It  has  to  be  taken  down  gradu- 
ally by  engineers  and  the  accumulated  waters 
drawn  off  slowly.  A  certain  part  of  the  dam 
is  taken  down  first  according  to  the  plan  of  the 
engineer.  In  this  simile  we  have  a  good  illustra- 


178,   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT; 

tion  of  the  concept  of  directed  and  undirected 
thinking.  The  waters  of  the  river  before  the 
dam  was  built  are  an  example  of  a  completely 
undirected  stream,  undirected  except  by  the  forces 
of  Nature,  who  has  been  there  from  the  beginning. 
But  for  human  purposes  it  becomes  desirable  to 
direct  the  power  of  the  water  from  its  natural  bed. 
Exactly  in  the  same  way  it  becomes  desirable  to 
direct  the  stream  of  the  unconscious  craving  from 
the  course  which  it  has  followed  for  ages.  The 
original  damming  of  the  unconscious  stream  began 
later,  but  still  long  ago  in  the  time  when  it  be- 
came necessary  for  people  to  live  together  in 
families,  in  clans,  in  phratries.  Every  drop  of 
water,  every  drop  of  human  individual  life  falling 
on  the  earth  from  the  rainclouds  of  the  cosmic 
craving  finds  itself  sooner  or  later  hemmed  in  by 
this  dam  which  is  always  present  in  all  social 
systems  of  even  the  lowest  degree  of  organisation. 
Almost  every  drop  of  water  is  destined  to  be 
directed  through  the  raceway  and  to  take  its  part 
in  turning  the  mill  wheel. 

The  points  which  this  simile  illustrates  are  that 
in  the  stream  of  mental  life  there  is  almost  no 
possibility  of  the  existence  of  absolutely  undi- 
rected conscious  thinking,  no  matter  how  great 
efforts  may  be  exerted  to  attain  it.  The  undi- 
rected thinking  consciously  attained  in  the  free 
associations  of  the  psychoanalytic  method  of  re- 


TWO  KINDS  OF  THINKING      179 

search  are  undirected  only  in  a  greater  degree  than 
those  of  ordinary  thinking.  The  dam  is,  so  to 
speak,  partly  taken  down  but  not  entirely.  The 
extent  to  which  the  dam  is  taken  down  measures 
the  degree  of  "  transference  "  mentioned  in  Chap- 
ter XI  and  the  success  of  the  analyser  in  dis- 
covering the  main  currents  of  the  craving  which 
is  the  cause  of  the  disturbances  he  is  to  remove. 
On  the  other  hand,  there  is  in  the  streaming  of 
the  unconscious  craving  a  great  amount  of  water 
that  spills  over  the  dam  and  whose  power  is 
wasted,  power  which  should  be  directed  into  the 
raceway  and  help  to  turn  the  mill,  a  member  of 
the  figure  of  speech  here  used  which  represents 
the  purely  human  element. 

So,  then,  we  have  the  natural  forces  of  the 
unconscious  craving  collected  by  society  for  purely 
social  purposes  and  diverted  from  their  natural 
course.  It  will  be  worth  while  to  examine  the 
details  of  our  hour-to-hour  mental  life  from  this 
point  of  view  exclusively,  as  to  whether  they  are 
examples  of  directed  or  undirected  thinking,  and 
not  to  forget  that  the  amount  of  directed  thinking 
that  any  given  individual  does  is  a  measure  of  his 
usefulness  to  society,  just  as  the  amount  of  water 
that  runs  through  the  raceway  is  a  measure  of  the 
amount  of  power  available  for  the  constructive 
work  of  civilisation.  In  every  person  there  is  a 
certain  amount  of  time  of  each  day  spent  in  con- 


i8o   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

scious  reverie,  which  is  a  form  of  undirected  think- 
ing and  as  nearly  undirected  as  is  likely  to  occur 
in  that  person.  There  is  also  a  certain  amount  of 
undirected  thinking  going  on  in  the  Unconscious  in 
all  persons.  We  have  reason  to  believe  that  those 
persons  having  the  greatest  amount  of  conscious 
undirected  thinking  are  the  ones  in  whom  the  undi- 
rected thinking  in  the  Unconscious  is  greatest  in 
amount.  And  vice  versa,  those  persons  who  have 
most  advantageously  disciplined  their  conscious 
thoughts  are  the  ones  in  whom  the  unconscious 
mental  processes  are  the  most  productive.  In  the 
normal  human,  then,  the  two  streams  run  side  by 
side  and  function  parallel  with  each  other  and,  in 
great  part,  connectedly.  The  president  of  a  large 
business  corporation  who  spends  a  couple  of  hours 
a  day  at  his  desk  and  can  afford  to  spend  a  great 
deal  of  time  in  recreation  is  an  example  of  the 
parallel  alignment  of  the  two  systems  of  conscious 
and  unconscious  mentality.  While  he  may  be  to 
all  external  appearances  playing  golf  at  his  coun- 
try club,  and  apparently  devoting  to  the  game  all 
his  energies  and  enthusiasm  for  the  time  being,  it 
is  quite  certain  that  he  has  succeeded  in  getting 
his  Unconscious  to  take  over  for  him  the  solution 
of  a  number  of  problems,  and  that  when,  the 
next  day,  he  returns  to  his  office,  his  mind  will  be 
made  up  on  a  great  many  matters  which  needed 
his  attention  and  his  decision.  It  is  a  familiar  fact 


TWO  KINDS  OF  THINKING      181 

that  some  intricate  mathematical  problems  are 
solved  during  sleep.  Freud,  too,  notes  that  a 
number  of  the  operations  in  the  dream  work  are 
already  completed  in  the  Unconscious  during  the 
day,  and  are  ready  for  incorporation  into  the 
dream-fabric  at  night. 

On  the  other  hand  let  us  take  for  example, 
instead  of  the  experienced  executive,  an  ordinary 
person  in  whom  the  conscious  mental  processes  are 
not  so  completely  directed  to  socially  organised 
ends.  For  eight  or  ten  hours  of  three  hundred 
days  in  the  year  he  works  at  his  occupation.  If  he 
is  systematic,  he  succeeds  in  accomplishing  more 
than  if  he  is  not,  which  is  the  same  as  saying  that 
the  more  his  energies  are  directed  according  to  his 
plan  or  system,  the  greater  will  be  his  constructive, 
his  productive  work.  That  applies,  however,  to 
the  three  hundred  times  eight  or  ten  hours  in  the 
year  or  to  about  2,400  to  3,000  hours  of  working 
time,  all  of  which  is  not  by  any  means  exclusively 
devoted  to  concentrated  directed  thinking,  even 
though  we  admit  as  directed  thinking  all  forms  of 
directed  or  productive  action.  Variation  is  very 
great,  as  everyone  knows,  in  the  productiveness 
of  different  people's  time  even  in  the  hours  called 
work  hours,  from  the  laziest  street  cleaner  to  the 
most  continuously  operating  telephone  girl.  But 
1 6  hours  of  waking  day  leaves  anywhere  from 
2,840  to  3,440  hours  in  the  year  which  by  most 


1 82   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT, 

people  are  spent  in  undirected  thinking.  From 
this  must  be  subtracted  all  time  spent  interestedly 
and  actively  in  sports  and  games.  These  are  as- 
suredly to  be  recognised  as  a  form  of  directed 
thinking,  although  they  may  not  ever  be  as  pro- 
ductive as  the  activities  especially  devoted  to  bread- 
winning.  The  quality  of  the  attention,  however, 
during  a  great  deal  of  the  time  that  men  are  play- 
ing games  is  highly  questionable.  It  all  depends 
on  how  much  of  the  time  is  actually  spent  on  the 
movements  of  the  game  and  how  much  on  talking 
small  talk. 

The  amount  of  time  in  a  year  that  is  not  used 
up  in  mental  operations  designed  to  attain  a  defi- 
nite purpose  other  than  mere  killing  of  time,  is 
admittedly  very  great  for  almost  all  persons. 
When  it  is  reflected  that  all  this  time  is  spent  in 
actively  or  passively  carrying  on  undirected  think- 
ing, which  is  popularly  called  reverie  or  day- 
dreaming, and  in  psychoanalysis  is  called  phan- 
tasying,  it  will  be  realised  how  very  large  a  pro- 
portion of  the  time  of  every  one  of  us  is  spent  in 
laying  the  foundations  of  future  miseries.  There 
is  scarcely  a  more  pitiful  sight  than  old  age  slip- 
ping into  imbecility  because  of  not  having  a  body 
of  organised  directed  thoughts  to  fall  back  on, 
and  there  is  nothing  more  inspiring  than  the  in- 
tellectually green  old  age  of  some  of  the  world's 
great  thinkers  and  performers. 


TWO  KINDS  OF  THINKING      183 

Now,  the  substance  of  the  undirected  thinking 
which  we  allow  ourselves  to  become  entangled  in, 
as  in  a  net,  is  nothing  but  the  more  or  less  dis- 
guised wishing  of  the  Unconscious.  If  we  let  the 
thing  go  on  developing  as  it  wills,  we  shall  have 
a  result  that  is  as  archaic  and  infantile  as  is  the 
untrained  Unconscious  itself,  as  we  day  by  day  slip 
nearer  to  "second  childishness  and  mere  oblivion." 
As  the  child  is  economically  a  burden  which  has 
to  be  carried  by  the  other  members  of  society,  and 
begins  to  lose  the  attribute  of  being  a  burden  only 
when,  and  in  proportion  as,  it  takes  upon  itself 
duties  which  relieve  others  from  its  own  care  and 
permit  its  caretakers  to  transfer  their  activities 
from  this  duty  to  a  mere  productive  sphere,  so 
any  relapsing  of  the  individual  back  into  the 
state  where  he  has  to  be  cared  for,  as  in  old 
age,  is  a  direct  slip  back  into  a  state  of  infan- 
tility. 

In  other  words,  all  the  natural  and  uncontrolled 
cravings  of  the  Unconscious  are  archaic  and  in- 
fantile, for  the  sole  and  simple  reason  that  they 
are  not  adapted  to  the  furthering  of  the  organisa- 
tion of  society.  The  serviceability,  therefore,  of 
any  concrete  instance  of  thought  or  action  is  the 
only  standard  by  which  we  can  judge  whether  the 
mind  is  phantasying  or  not  in  entertaining  it.  If 
directly  or  indirectly  it  is  found  to  be  serviceable 
to  mankind,  it  has  to  be  accounted  directed  think- 


1 84   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

ing.  If  it  is  not  thus  serviceable  it  is  inevitably 
a  phantasy.  The  only  redeeming  quality  that 
imagination  can  have  is  the  quality  of  contributing 
something  to  someone  other  than  the  person  who 
is  doing  the  imagining.  The  reference  of  our 
thoughts  to  the  existence  of  any  other  person  re- 
deems them  from  being  absolutely  selfish,  which 
is  absolutely  introversional,  which  is  completely 
phantastic.  So  it  comes  about  that  every  phan- 
tasy is  a  step  in  the  direction  of  isolation  from 
others  and  every  act  of  directed  thinking  is  a 
step  toward  association  with  others.  The  pic- 
ture of  those  who  have  walked  too  far  toward 
isolation  from  their  fellows  is  given  in  the  words 
of  a  celebrated  European  alienist  (speaking  of 
dementia-precox  patients  in  an  asylum)  : 

"  The  patient  who  wishes  to  isolate  himself 
from  reality  must  permit  the  environment  to  act 
upon  him  as  little  as  possible,  but  he  must  also 
not  wish  to  influence  it  actively  himself  and  for 
two  reasons.  By  doing  so  he  would  become  dis- 
tracted from  within  and  obliged  to  heed  the  ex- 
ternal world  so  as  to  be  able  to  act  upon  it; 
furthermore,  through  the  action  itself  he  would 
create  new  sensory  stimuli  and  other  relations  with 
reality.  The  autistic  and  negativistic  patients  are 
therefore  mostly  inactive;  they  have  actively  as 
well  as  passively  narrowed  relations  with  the  outer 
world. 


[TWO  KINDS  OF  THINKING      185 

"  But  the  autistic  patients  have  not  alone  a 
positive  reason  for  busying  themselves  undis- 
turbed with  their  own  ideas  where  they  see  their 
wishes  fulfilled.  The  imagined  happiness  is  not 
absolute.  It  is  destroyed  not  only  through  the 
influences  of  the  outer  world  and  the  conception 
of  reality,  but  in  its  place  appears  much  oftener 
under  such  circumstances  the  sensation  of  the  op- 
posite of  the  wish  unfulfilled  in  reality.  All  these 
patients  have  a  life  wound  which  is  split  off  from 
the  ego  as  well  as  may  be  and  hidden  by  an  oppo- 
site conception.  For  that  reason  they  must  defend 
themselves  against  any  contact  with  their  complex; 
and  as  in  the  split-up  thought  process  of  the 
schizophrenic,  everything  so  to  speak  may  have 
its  association  with  the  complex,  so  everything  may 
be  painful  which  comes  from  the  outside.  ... 

"  By  means  of  this  conduct  the  patients  carica- 
ture and  exaggerate  only  one  of  the  usual  mani- 
festations of  the  normal.  It  is  a  general  experi- 
ence that  questions  which  relate  to  complexes  are 
at  once  answered  in  the  negative  even  when  the 
persons  wish  to  be  open  and  afterward  speak  of 
it  without  dissembling.  For  there  exists  an  in- 
stinctive tendency  to  conceal  the  complex.  Nor- 
mal persons,  likewise,  see  to  it  that  their  life's 
wound  is  not  touched  upon,  and  they  also  often 
have  in  misfortune  the  tendency  to  withdraw 
within  themselves,  because  by  contact  with  others 


1 86   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

there  are  so  many  things  that  root  up  the  pains, 
by  association  with  the  complex."  * 

I  have  spoken  of  carrying  on  undirected  think- 
ing either  actively  or  passively.  The  active  type 
is  best  represented  by  the  ordinary  casual  course 
of  everyday  conversation  between  friends  and  ac- 
quaintances, in  which  no  information  about  mat- 
ters of  fact  is  transferred  from  one  person  to 
another,  but  only  matters  of  feeling.  If  A  tells 
B  how  he  felt  or  gives  him  a  long  account  of  what 
he  did,  the  details  of  which  B  cannot  visualise  or 
follow  in  any  other  form  of  imagination,  A  is 
only  uttering  a  string  of  his  own  phantasies  or 
unconscious  wishes  symbolised  in  one  form  or  an- 
other, and  the  chances  are  that  B  will  reply  with  a 
line  of  phantasies  of  his  own  couched  in  language 
descriptive  of  a  motor  trip  or  a  shooting-party, 
etc.  Such  conversation  never  leads  anywhere  and 
in  real  social  value  is  on  a  par  with  any  other 
species  of  phantasying.  Everybody  would  admit 
that  a  life  made  up  exclusively  of  that  would  be 
utterly  without  value. 

Another  very  concrete  illustration  of  the  active 
kind  of  phantasying  is  the  writing  of  a  certain 
kind  of  letter,  which  with  its  physical  concomitants 
is  frequently  but  a  symbolism  of  the  unconscious 
wishes  of  the  writer. 

*BIeuler:    Theory    of   Schizophrenic   Negativism,   trans,    by 
William  A.  White,  New  York,  1912  (p.  20). 


TWO  KINDS  OF  THINKING      187 

If  a  person  sits  down  to  write  a  letter  that  he 
does  not  very  much  want  to  write  and  begins  by 
biting  the  end  of  the  penholder,  he  shows  in  that 
act  the  working  of  the  Unconscious  on  his  actions. 
The  biting  of  the  end  of  the  penholder  is  a  return 
to  the  nutritional  level,  because  the  Unconscious 
of  the  man,  or  to  whom  the  man  belongs,  does 
not  want  to  take  the  trouble  to  write  a  letter  any- 
way, because  there  is  no  reward  held  out  to  It. 
If  It  were  going  to  get  any  immediate  return  for 
writing  the  letter,  It  would  go  about  the  epistolary 
labour  with  great  eagerness.  Plenty  of  ideas 
would  rush  in  and  the  conscious  part  of  the  man 
would  have  a  plentiful  selection  from  which  he 
could  choose  the  best  according  to  his  taste  and 
judgment  and  produce  a  very  fine  result.  But 
this  Unconscious  is  "not  a  good  letter  writer"; 
everybody  knows  it,  and  the  sense  of  inferiority 
aroused  in  the  Unconscious  is  the  cause  of  some 
unpleasant  ideas  being  stirred  up  in  the  basement 
where  the  fellow  lives.  It  is  exactly  as  if  the  fel- 
low were  told,  "  You  can't  do  that,"  and  believed 
it.  Here  comes  in  the  feeling  of  necessity  for 
a  sense  of  mastery  somewhere.  If  the  fellow  can- 
not eat  one  thing  he  must  eat  something  else.  He 
must  be  eating  all  the  time,  figuratively  speaking. 
He  must  get,  all  the  time,  his  feeling  of  superior- 
ity, and,  as  in  a  previously  mentioned  case,  if  he 
cannot  get  it  out  of  one  situation  he  will  abolish 


1 88    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT, 

the  whole  situation.  The  feeling  of  inferiority 
before  the  pen,  and  the  sense  of  not  being  able 
to  cope  with  the  letter-writing  situation,  immedi- 
ately require  the  satisfaction  to  be  supplied  from 
some  other  source,  and  the  Unconscious  will  ac- 
cept that  satisfaction  from  the  nutrition  or  sem- 
blance of  nutrition  to  be  absorbed  from  the  end 
of  a  penholder.  That  is  why  the  diffident  writer 
begins  by  biting  the  end  of  the  pen.  It  is  much 
as  if  in  a  house  that  was  supplied  by  two  electric 
lighting  companies  one  of  the  currents  failed  and 
the  occupant  of  the  house  immediately  turned  on 
the  other.  He  had  to  have  light  at  any  cost.  But 
it  happened  that  one  of  the  companies  was  able 
to  sell  the  current  at  a  very  much  cheaper  rate 
than  the  other,  and  that  the  man  who  turned  on 
the  other  current  the  minute  that  the  first  current 
was  temporarily  put  out  of  commission  was  doing 
a  ruinously  expensive  thing.  That  is  what  might 
be  said  of  the  person  who  begins  to  write  a  letter 
by  taking  nourishment  from  the  end  of  a  pen. 
He  is  doing  something  that  is  ruinously  expen- 
sive to  him,  not  merely  from  the  point  of  view 
of  the  wasted  time,  but  from  the  point  of 
view  of  the  misdirected  development  of  his 
Unconscious. 

We  have  considered  here  merely  the  physical 
manifestations  connected  with  the  attempt  to  write 
a  letter  in  which  the  would-be  writer  was  not  very 


TWO  KINDS  OF  THINKING      189 

strongly  interested.  The  mental  aspects  of  the 
same  situation  are  familiar  to  everybody.  This 
person — man,  woman  or  child — sits  in  the  well- 
known  position  with  head  thrown  back  as  if  he 
were  some  sort  of  receptacle  about  to  have  some- 
thing poured  into  him.  He  actually  waits  for 
ideas  to  occur  to  him.  That  is  really  the  only 
thing  that  all  ideas  ever  do,  as  they  are  supplied 
by  the  Unconscious.  And  in  a  certain  sense  his 
consciousness  is  only  a  reservoir  into  which  rises 
a  stream  of  mental  states,  all  of  them  having  their 
subterranean  source  in  the  Unconscious.  It  may 
be  said  that  the  ideas  that  are  contributed  to  this 
stream  by  the  factor  of  sensation  coming  in  from 
the  outside  world  do  not  rise  from  the  Uncon- 
scious. But  while  this  is  literally  true  as  a  fact, 
it  does  not  represent  the  whole  truth,  for  the  sen- 
sations from  the  outside  world  are  so  much 
changed  by  the  action  of  the  large  body  of  the 
Unconscious  that  they  may  be  said  to  be  the 
product  more  of  the  Unconscious  part  of  the  per- 
ceiving mind  than  the  product  of  the  world  of 
reality. 

To  return  to  our  hypothetical  letter  writer.  If 
no  ideas  come  to  him,  there  he  sits  and  wriggles. 
If  they  do  come,  we  know  that  they  come  from 
the  Unconscious,  and  are  selected  by  the  Uncon- 
scious for  purposes  best  known  to  Itself.  How 
many  letters  have  contained  mostly  a  list  of 


i9o   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

wishes,  a  list  of  misfortunes  which  might  happen 
to  the  recipient,  but  all  of  them  mentioned  either 
by  their  negatives  or  their  opposites  or  contraries ! 
Whether  you  write  to  your  friend  that  you  hope 
that  he  will  have  good  weather  on  his  vacation, 
or  that  you  hope  that  he  will  not  have  bad  weather, 
they  of  course  both  amount  to  the  same  thing, 
which  is  that  your  Unconscious  hopes  that  he 
will  have  bad  weather.  Otherwise  why  mention 
weather  at  all  ?  It  is  the  same  thing  whether  you 
write  that  you  hope  that  he  will  arrive  safely,  or 
that  you  hope  that  he  will  not  meet  with  any  acci- 
dents, both  of  these  expressions  of  good  will  really 
meaning  that  your  Unconscious  would  be  most 
interested  to  hear  that  he  was  well  shaken  up  in 
an  accident.  Otherwise  why  mention  accidents  at 
all?  If  accidents  to  your  friends  were  not  upper- 
most in  your  Unconscious,  which  from  the  in- 
feriority point  of  view  takes  all  other  persons  as 
rivals  whose  downfall  It  desires,  you  would  men- 
tion them  not  at  all.  They  would  simply  not  occur 
to  you  as  you  sit  with  pen  in  mouth.  There  are 
some  persons  who  are  continually  asking  after  the 
emotional  states  of  their  acquaintances,  if  they 
had  a  good  time,  if  they  enjoyed  themselves,  how 
they  felt,  etc.*  This  interest  is  never  sincere 

*Holt  (/.  c.,  p.  8)  tells  of  a  man  who  tormented  his  wife  and 
incidentally  the  friends  that  were  present,  for  two  hours  on  a 
quiet  moonlight  evening,  by  asking  her  if  she  was  not  chilly,  if 
be  should  not  bring  her  a  shawl,  etc. 


TWO  KINDS  OF  THINKING      191 

from  the  point  of  view  of  the  Unconscious,  how- 
ever sincere  the  speaker  and  hearer  or  writer  and 
reader  may  consciously  think  they  are.  In  a  cer- 
tain sense  there  is  a  class  of  ideas  that  ought  never 
to  be  mentioned  among  people  who  think  them- 
selves friends.  That  would  seem  to  cut  out  the 
expression  of  sympathy.  It  would.  There  is  no 
good  reason  for  the  existence  of  most  of  the 
sympathy  in  the  world.  For  let  us  analyse  sym- 
pathy and  see  what  is  in  it.  By  virtue  of  its  his- 
tory the  word  sympathy  means  feeling  with,  imply- 
ing that  when  you  sympathise  with  a  friend  you 
feel  with  him, — that  is,  have  the  same  feeling  that 
he  has, — and  that  you  are  triumphant  in  the  belief 
that  he  will  feel  better  if  he  knows  that  you  are 
feeling  bad  at  the  same  time.  Taking  a  concrete 
instance,  if  your  friend  cuts  his  finger  accidentally, 
you  can  best  serve  him,  supposing  of  course  that 
you  are  really  desirous  of  serving  him,  by  acci- 
dentally cutting  your  own  finger,  and  letting  him 
know  how  much  it  pains  you.  That  is  a  literal 
"  feeling  with,"  a  paralleling  of  one  misfortune 
by  another,  as  if  two  misfortunes  made  a  fortune. 
The  next  remove  from  this  is  the  paralleling  of 
the  real  misfortune  by  an  imaginary  one.  Your 
friend  cuts  his  finger  in  this  case  and  you,  instead 
of  actually  taking  a  knife  and  accidentally  con- 
triving to  cause  it  to  inobservantly  cut  you,  cry 
out  that  you  feel  as  if  you  had  been  cut,  you  can 


i92   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

imagine  exactly  how  the  lancinating  pain  of  the 
severed  flesh  must  exquisitely  anguish  the  unfortu- 
nate friend.  Or  you  recall  with  realistic  detail 
how  you  or  your  uncle  or  cousin  suffered  in 
the  same  or  similar  circumstances.  The  really 
thoughtful  person  does  not  want  any  sympathy, 
for  he  knows  that  unless  he  is  willing  to  have 
misery  doubled  in  the  world,  he  is  unwilling  to 
have  his  misfortune  propagated  to  return  upon 
him  later  with  interest,  as  it  would  be  if  it  were 
really  so  contagious  as  sympathy  would  try  to 
make  it.  Of  course  it  will  be  said  that  here  we  are 
really  not  talking  of  the  best  form  of  sympathy, 
but  of  the  worst.  Granted.  Expressions  of  sym- 
pathy, then,  are  to  be  expunged  from  our  budget 
of  conversation.  We  see  now,  I  hope,  whence 
all  expressions  of  sympathy  arise.  But  we  began 
to  talk  about  the  difference  between  directed 
thinking  and  what  psychoanalysis  has  called  phan- 
tasying,  and  find  ourselves  in  an  unsympathetic 
treatment  of  the  feeling  called  sympathy.  Now, 
what  is  the  verbal  expression  of  sympathy  but  an 
instance  of  a  sort  of  undirected  thinking  which  is 
for  the  time  taking  the  rightful  place  of  directed 
thinking  or  action?  There  are  appropriate  words 
and  actions  that  may  helpfully  be  said  and  done 
in  times  of  suffering,  but  they  do  not  include  much 
if  any  verbal  expression  of  regret.  We  know 
now  that  the  mental  state  called  sympathy  is  but 


TWO  KINDS  OF  THINKING      193 

the  outpouring  of  envy,  revenge  and  other  hos- 
tility from  the  depths  of  the  Unconscious.  The 
recipient  of  such  sympathy  always  pretends  to  be 
very  much  gratified  and  eased  of  his  misery,  but 
he  is  only  prevaricating  according  to  the  immemo- 
rial usage  of  his  equally  deluded  forebears.  But 
the  duplicating,  by  means  of  words,  of  the  pain  or 
suffering  of  some  other  person  is  nothing  but  the 
elaboration  of  the  unpleasant  situation,  a  dwell- 
ing on  the  thoughts  and  sensations  of  the  agonis- 
ing circumstances,  and  a  prolongation  or  propaga- 
tion of  the  misfortune,  the  only  purpose  of  which 
could  be  the  preparation  of  the  victim  to  suffer 
greater  ills  with  more  heroic  fortitude.  The 
verbal  expression  of  sympathy  is  a  case  of  phan- 
tasying  or  undirected  thinking,  that  is  the  kind  of 
archaic  thinking  that  the  Unconscious  is  always 
doing  until  we  get  it  partly  trained  or  its  nose 
ringed,  so  that  it  can  be  made  serviceable  for 
society. 

The  variety  of  undirected  thinking  spoken  of 
above  as  passive  is  illustrated  in  the  reading  of 
novels,  stories  and  fiction  of  all  kinds  and  even  the 
reading  of  some  newspapers  and  magazines.  The 
clearest  and  most  undiluted  form  of  it,  however, 
is  the  ordinary  day-dream  or  reverie.  It  needs  no 
description,  being  perfectly  familiar.  The  phys- 
ical accompaniments  of  it  are  also  well  known; 
the  motionlessness,  the  far-away  look  in  the  eyes, 


i94    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT. 

the  difficulty  of  interrupting  it  when  it  has  gained 
a  good  hold  upon  the  victim,  hardly  need  to  be 
mentioned. 

Jung,  in  his  Psychology  of  the  Unconscious, 
says  of  the  directed  thinking  that  it  is  character- 
istic of  civilisation  since  the  Middle  Ages,  that  its 
most  developed  form  exists  in  modern  science  and 
that  the  ancient  civilisations  were  without  it  and 
all  their  thinking  was  of  the  undirected  kind  as 
seen  in  works  of  art  and  in  myths,  the  essential 
quality  of  which  was  the  phantasy. 

"  Here,  we  move  in  a  world  of  phantasies, 
which,  little  concerned  with  the  outer  course  of 
things,  flow  from  an  inner  source,  and,  constantly 
changing,  create  now  plastic,  now  shadowy 
shapes.  This  phantastical  activity  of  the  ancient 
mind  created  artistically,  par  excellence.  The  ob- 
ject of  the  interest  does  not  seem  to  have  been  to 
grasp  hold  of  the  '  how '  of  the  real  world  as 
objectively  and  exactly  as  possible,  but  to  aestheti- 
cally adapt  subjective  phantasies  and  expectations. 
There  was  very  little  place  among  ancient  people 
for  the  coldness  and  disillusion  which  Giordano 
Bruno's  thoughts  on  eternity  and  Kepler's  dis- 
coveries brought  to  modern  humanity.  The  nai've 
man  of  antiquity  saw  in  the  sun  the  great  Father 
of  the  heaven  and  the  earth,  and  in  the  moon  the 
fruitful  good  mother.  .  .  .  Thus  arose  an  idea  of 
the  universe  which  was  not  only  very  far  from 


TWO  KINDS  OF  THINKING      195 

reality  but  was  one  which  corresponded  wholly  to 
subjective  phantasies"  (p.  25). 

Other  characteristics  of  the  directed  form  of 
thinking  are  that  it  is  generally  carried  on  in 
words  and  that  it  fatigues  the  thinker.  The  first 
of  these  brings  up  the  problem  of  the  possibility 
of  thinking  without  words,  which  we  have  no 
space  here  to  discuss,  except  to  remark  that  think- 
ing without  words  is  more  likely  to  be  phantastic 
than  thinking  with  words,  which,  owing  to  their 
long  evolution  as  symbols  of  thought  and  to  the 
great  advantage  of  the  symbol  over  any  other 
form  in  expressing  abstract  ideas,  are  better  fitted 
than  any  other  medium  of  expression  for  com- 
municating our  thoughts.  The  fact  that  directed 
thinking  fatigues  the  thinker  and  that  he  turns 
away  from  it  as  soon  as  possible  and  fulfils  the 
wishes  of  the  unconscious  craving  in  allowing  it 
to  wander  as  it  wills,  restricted  only  by  the  sym- 
bolism necessary  to  disguise  it  in  order  to  get  by 
the  endopsychic  censor,  explains  why  there  is  so 
much  time  given  by  all  people  to  the  undirected 
variety. 

Intellectual  sloth  is  the  characteristic  of  by  far 
the  greatest  majority  of  even  the  so-called  culti- 
vated people,  and  having  accomplished  a  few 
hours  of  mental  work  they  think  they  are  tired 
out,  that  it  will  injure  their  brains  to  work  con- 
stantly and  so  on,  all  these  generalities  being  pre- 


i96   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

texts  furnished  forth  by  the  unknown  Titan 
within  them  who  wishes  to  continue  his  wishing 
uninterrupted.  No  horse  wants  to  take  a  bit  in 
his  mouth,  and,  until  he  has  been  broken,  it  is  a 
difficult  task  to  make  him  take  it  and  allow  himself 
to  be  harnessed.  The  Titan  within  us  must  be 
harnessed  and  he  will  then  work  with  and  for  us 
as  does  the  horse.  Not  even  a  horse  is  a  valuable 
member  of  society  until  he  can  do  some  work  for 
it.  If  intellectual  laziness  were  not  so  universal 
the  moving-picture  business  would  not  have  grown 
to  such  enormous  proportions  in  this  country. 
The  placing  of  moving-pictures  within  the  reach 
of  everyone  has  put  in  everyone's  hands  the  power 
to  indulge  without  restraint  in  the  tendency  to 
phantasy,  as  the  scenarios  are  for  the  most  part 
written,  consciously  or  unconsciously,  with  a  view 
to  supplying  for  everybody  the  fulfilment  of  their 
most  extravagant  wishes.  The  impossibilities  of 
fairy  lore  are  represented  on  the  screen  as  actu- 
ally visible  and  the  tramp  artist  has  only  to  draw 
a  sketch  of  a  glass  of  beer,  reach  forth  his  hand 
and  take  it  from  the  paper  and  drink  it  before 
our  very  eyes. 

The  worst  feature  about  the  undirected  variety 
of  mental  action  is  that  it  produces  in  the  indi- 
vidual a  habit  of  squeezing  as  much  pleasurable 
affect  as  possible  out  of  every  mental  experience. 
The  undirected  thinking  proceeds  solely  upon  the 


TWO  KINDS  OF  THINKING      197 

basis  of  the  principle  of  pleasure-pain  and  not 
upon  that  of  reality,  so  that  all  the  phantasies  in 
which  the  psychic  indulges  are  selected  for  their 
pleasure-giving  quality.  This  does  not  exclude 
the  undirected  thinking  of  an  apparently  unpleas- 
ant quality,  such  as  worry,  for  we  saw  in  Chapter 
VII  that  there  is  a  sort  of  pleasure  derived  from 
a  certain  degree  of  pain.  The  evil  result  of 
squeezing  pleasure  out  of  our  phantasies  is  that 
the  affects  so  heightened  in  this  intemperate  way 
are  generally  increased  out  of  all  due  proportion 
with  their  normally  exciting  causes.  In  being  thus 
exaggerated  they  are  necessarily  shifted  in  the 
mind  from  experiences  which  should  have  affects 
of  that  degree  to  experiences  which  should  pos- 
sibly have  no  perceptible  affect  tone  at  all.  This 
has  for  one  result  the  misplacement  of  affects  in 
the  Unconscious,  and  it  is  one  of  the  contributions 
of  psychoanalysis  that  the  misplaced  affects  in  the 
Unconscious  are  the  causes  of  many  nervous  dis- 
eases. Misplacement  of  affect  is  partly  due  to  the 
composite  nature  of  the  physical  expression  of  the 
affect,  and  we  shall  see  in  the  chapter  on  the  cure 
of  disease  that  some  ideas  are,  as  it  were,  dis- 
missed from  the  realm  of  directed  thinking,  those 
ideas  in  short  which  are  connected  with  affects  or 
emotions  so  painful  that  we  do  not  wish  to  enter- 
tain them  consciously.  These  ideas,  dismissed 
during  the  process  of  undirected  thinking,  are  the 


i98   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

ones  that  gain  an  independent  individuality  in  the 
Unconscious,  and  by  virtue  of  the  emotions  con- 
nected with  them,  become  subject  to  the  conver- 
sion into  physical  symptoms  accompanying  the 
various  diseases  of  psychogenic  origin. 

It  is  thus  clear  that  the  only  course  to  pursue 
in  a  situation  containing  painful  emotions  is  to 
retain  the  situation  in  consciousness,  and  subject 
it  to  directed  thinking  until  the  elements  of  the  situ- 
ation are  classified  and  reacted  upon  in  the  social, 
and  not  in  the  asocial  way,  the  latter  being  the 
way  of  phantasying  which  dwells  only  upon  the 
pleasurable  elements  in  any  situation  and  ignores 
— that  is,  represses  into  unconsciousness — the 
painful  ones.  The  only  wholesome  release  from  a 
situation  full  of  pain  is  activity  toward  a  recon- 
struction of  the  circumstances  which  occasion  the 
pain.  It  is  never  a  wholesome  handling  of  the 
painful  situation  merely  to  go  over  the  different 
incidents  mentally  and  alone,  for  that  course  but 
emphasises  the  possibilities  of  finding  some  pleas- 
ure in  the  situation,  and  the  hunt  for  pleasure  is 
the  natural  trend  of  the  Unconscious  on  the  low, 
pleasure-pain  level. 

Some  of  the  occasions  in  everyday  life  on  which 
we  are  momentarily  thrown  off  the  track  of  the 
directed  thinking  on  which  we  may  at  the  time  be 
engaged,  will  be  given  in  the  next  chapter.  Most 
of  these  illustrations  of  the  temporary  shifting  of 


TWO  KINDS  OF  THINKING      199 

our  psyche  from  the  directed  track  to  the  undi- 
rected are  sometimes  otherwise  known  as  instances 
of  absent-mindedness.  In  our  work,  in  which  we 
think  we  are  following  out  a  definitely  planned 
course,  and  are  not  side-stepping  from  it,  we  some- 
times find  ourselves  making  mistakes  or  doing 
other  slightly  irrational  things.  These  interpola- 
tions of  the  Unconscious  are  usually  of  very  brief 
duration.  We  find  ourselves  doing  or  saying  an 
inappropriate  thing,  and  we  immediately  recover 
our  lost  control  and  continue  with  our  work.  Some 
persons  consider  such  a  getting  off  the  directed 
track  as  a  perfectly  inconsequential  thing  and  pay 
no  further  attention  to  it,  except  in  cases  where, 
at  an  important  time,  our  Unconscious  has  made 
us  say  exactly  the  opposite  of  what  we  consciously 
intended  to  say.  Then  very  likely  we  wonder  what 
could  have  caused  us  to  make  such  a  bad  mistake, 
and  we  wish  we  had  a  way  to  find  out  the  cause 
of  it.  Psychoanalysis  supplies  the  means  not  only 
of  solving  these  problems  but  also  of  preventing 
a  recurrence  of  the  errors. 


CHAPTER  X 

EVERYDAY   LIFE 

JUST  as  the  factories  have  turned  their  wastes  to 
profit  by  employing  chemists  to  devise  means  for 
making  use  of  them  as  "  by-products,"  so  psycho- 
analysis has,  like  the  industrial  chemists,  turned 
to  good  account  a  number  of  mental  products 
which  would  before  the  present  day  have  been 
called  utterly  useless  and  trivial.  I  refer  to  the 
slips  of  the  tongue  and  pen,  to  erroneously  car- 
ried out  actions,  to  certain  types  of  constant  for- 
getting, as  well  as  to  dreams,  which  are  dis- 
cussed in  another  chapter.  Persons  in  perfectly 
good  health,  too,  are  sometimes  pursued  by  a  word 
which  occurs  to  them  without  any  apparent  rea- 
son, and  repeatedly,  until  they  begin  to  wonder  if 
it  has  any  significance  for  their  mental  sanity. 
One  man  was  pursued  by  the  word  "  pentako- 
simedimne."  Its  recurrence  troubled  him  and  he 
took  it  to  a  psychoanalyst  and  found  out  after  a 
short  period  of  study  where  it  came  from.  It  is 
not  in  any  dictionary,  but  it  is  a  word  of  a  type 
that  Lewis  Carroll  called  a  portmanteau  word, — 
that  is,  a  word  composed  of  parts  of  two  or  more 

200 


EVERYDAY  LIFE  201 

other  words  and  having  a  meaning  that  is  a  sort 
of  compromise  between  the  two  meanings  of 
the  original  words.  Thus  in  the  famous  poem 
"  Jabberwocky  "  where  the  Unconscious-inspired 
bard  says  that  "  'Twas  brillig  and  the  slithy  toves 
did  gyre  and  gimble  in  the  wabe  "  he  explains  the 
word  slithy  as  being  a  combination  of  lithe  and 
slimy,  suggesting  at  the  same  time  that  the  mean- 
ing of  the  new  word  contains  the  meanings  of  the 
two  old  words  of  which  it  is  composed.  Similarly 
the  word  "  pentakosimedimne  "  was  analysed  by 
the  specialist  and  found  to  contain  behind  its 
Greek  elements  a  condensation  of  a  number  of  the 
difficulties  that  beset  the  path  of  the  person  in 
question,  which  being  in  this  way  called  to  the 
attention  of  the  puzzled  individual  were  of  not  a 
little  service  to  him  in  freeing  himself  from  those 
difficulties.  If  he  had  gone  on  being  troubled  by 
the  persistence  of  this  word's  being  forced  into 
consciousness,  he  would  probably  have  thought 
that  he  was  beginning  to  lose  his  mind,  and  lost 
time,  strength  and  efficiency  in  worrying  about  it. 
But  the  satisfactory  result  of  his  being  able  to 
have  the  phenomenon  properly  analysed  was  that 
he  understood  not  only  the  meaning  of  the  word 
but  also  the  cause  of  the  word's  coming  into  con- 
sciousness. A  further  satisfactory  result  of  the 
taking  of  the  word  into  the  sphere  of  directed 
thinking  is  a  result  that  almost  invariably  is  at- 


202   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

tained  in  such  cases.  The  word,  having  lost  its 
mysterious  and  unaccountable  character,  and  hav- 
ing been  brought  into  the  realm  of  ordered  scien- 
tific thought,  ceased  to  recur.  That  episode  was 
closed,  both  in  the  Unconscious  and  in  conscious- 
ness. The  affects  or  emotions  connected  with  it, 
which  might  easily  have  gone  on  developing  below 
the  threshold  of  consciousness,  and  might  have 
been  converted  into  a  physical  symptom,  were 
worked  off  in  the  air  and  light  of  scientific  knowl- 
edge and  left  a  good  instead  of  a  bad  effect  upon 
the  psyche.  This  indicates  a  very  wholesome 
practical  procedure  for  anyone  who  is  troubled 
by  the  mysterious  appearance  of  any  thought  in 
consciousness.  It  makes  no  difference  whether 
this  thought  is  in  the  form  of  a  word  or  a  picture 
or  a  bit  of  music  which  keeps  "  running  in  one's 
head,"  or  even  the  memory  of  an  odour,  a  not 
impossible  thing,  we  know  that  there  is  a  per- 
fectly legitimate  natural  cause  for  its  occurrence, 
and  if  we  cannot  find  the  opportunity  to  have 
it  analysed  or  are  unable  to  analyse  it  ourselves, 
we  may  be  assured  that  it  is  not  a  sign  that  we  are 
losing  our  minds,  but  that  on  the  contrary  it  may 
be  a  warning  sent  up  from  the  Unconscious  con- 
cerning something  that  we  may  be  acting  unwisely 
about.  It  then  behooves  all  persons,  if  there 
enters  a  mystery  into  their  minds,  to  take  the 
most  businesslike  methods  they  are  capable  of  to 


EVERYDAY  LIFE  203 

order  their  life  as  well  as  they  can,  and  as  quickly 
as  they  can,  in  all  particulars.  The  day  may  come 
when  all  teachers,  even  of  the  lowest  grades,  may 
be  trained  in  the  art  of  analysing  their  pupils. 
Pfister's  book  *  was  written  for  the  special  pur- 
pose of  applying  the  principles  of  psychoanalysis 
in  the  schoolroom.  But  until  the  day  comes  when 
teachers  are  expected  to  know  not  only  their  sub- 
jects but  also  their  objects,  the  pupils,  psycho- 
analysis will  be  an  expensive  luxury  to  be  had 
from  non-medical  specialists  in  this  branch  of  psy- 
chology and  from  only  a  few  of  the  most  promi- 
nent neurologists. 

Freud  began  his  work  with  the  mentally  dis- 
eased. His  attention  was  then  called  to  the  part 
played  in  the  neuroses  by  the  dreams  of  the  pa- 
tients, and  their  very  great  value  not  only  in 
diagnosing  but  also  in  alleviating  the  disorders. 
Then  he  wrote  his  book  on  the  interpretation  of 
dreams,  and  later  still,  seeing  the  fine  gradations 
between  the  sane  and  the  insane,  he  wrote  a  book 
on  the  psychopathology  of  everyday  life,  in  which 
he  gives  examples  of  mistakes  in  reading  and 
writing,  in  ordinary  actions  of  various  kinds,  all 
of  them  occurring  in  persons  who  could  never 
under  any  consideration  be  classed  as  insane. 
The  fundamental  thesis  of  this  book  of  his  is  that 
all  our  actions,  even  the  unintentional  ones  which 

*  Cited  pp.  68,  119,  121. 


204  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT, 

crop  out  as  mistakes,  errors  and  lapses  of  mem- 
ory, have  a  common  cause  in  the  Unconscious, 
and  that  they  are  an  expression  of  the  wish  of 
the  Unconscious.  Thus  if  one  writes  a  letter  and 
forgets  to  post  it,  there  is  a  probability  that  there 
was  in  the  Unconscious  a  motive  for  not  posting 
it.  Possibly  it  contained  a  check  in  payment  of  a 
bill.  Possibly  the  check  was  "  inadvertently  "  left 
out,  in  which  case  the  letter  might  be  remembered 
and  posted.  If  we  "  inadvertently  "  leave  any 
of  our  belongings  in  the  house  of  a  friend  the 
supposition  is  that  there  is  an  unconscious  wish  to 
return  soon  ostensibly  for  the  purpose  of  remov- 
ing the  articles.  If  we  blunder  in  shaking  hands 
with  a  new  acquaintance,  the  presumption  is  that 
our  Unconscious  sees  something  in  the  person  that 
it  does  not  like,  probably  a  resemblance  to  some 
person  who  has  offended  us.  If  we  find  difficulty 
in  meeting  an  appointment  on  time,  it  is  likely  that 
we  have  at  least  an  unconscious  desire  not  to  meet 
it  at  all. 

In  the  psychoanalysis  of  everyday  life  one 
whose  attention  has  been  called  to  it  may  notice 
the  sudden  occurrence  to  the  mind  of  words  which 
seem  to  be  entirely  unconnected  with  the  general 
topic  then  under  consideration.  I  have  an  ex- 
ample in  my  own  experience  of  a  word  coming  in 
that  way  through  the  Unconscious  and  not  imme- 
diately perceived.  As  I  sat  in  a  restaurant  one 


EVERYDAY  LIFE  205 

day  my  eye  wandered  about  and  I  suddenly  heard 
mentally  the  word  "  Pittsburg."  I  was  not  con- 
scious at  the  time  of  seeing  or  having  seen  the 
word  printed  anywhere.  Being  familiar  with  this 
experience,  however,  I  looked  purposively  at  all 
the  printed  words  there  visible  and  soon  found 
the  word  on  a  bill  of  fare  right  before  me,  which 
of  course  I  must  have  seen.  The  word  had 
entered  my  Unconscious  by  way  of  the  sense  of 
sight  and  had  then  been  pushed  up  from  the 
Unconscious  into  consciousness  by  way  of  the 
sense  of  mental  hearing.  On  another  occasion 
I  was  sitting  at  my  table  writing  when  my  con- 
sciousness became  aware  of  a  peculiar  odour 
which  by  reflection  was  appreciated  as  being  like 
that  of  ink.  I  then  saw  that  I  had  laid  my  foun- 
tain pen  down  in  such  a  way  that  the  point  of  it 
touched  the  table  cover.  Some  ink  had  soaked 
out  from  the  pen  and  had,  right  before  my  eyes, 
made  a  stain  about  the  size  of  a  copper  cent  on 
the  white  cloth.  In  this  instance  the  information 
that  I  had  stained  the  table  cover  was  conveyed 
first  to  my  Unconscious  by  way  of  the  sense  of 
smell  and  then  to  my  consciousness  by  way  of  a 
mental  image  of  sight.  In  both  these  instances 
analysis,  which  I  had  not  the  time  in  the  one 
case  or  knowledge  in  the  other  to  accomplish, 
might  have  shown  that  there  was  some  idea  in  my 
Unconscious  particularly  suited  to  call  up  the  idea 


206   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

of  Pittsburg  in  the  one  case  and  ink  in  the  other. 

Another  class  of  mental  phenomena  in  which 
we  see  the  unconscious  element  strongly  predomi- 
nating is  that  class  of  words  by  neurologists  called 
neologisms.  I  have  observed  numerous  neol- 
ogisms occurring  in  my  own  mental  states,  which, 
however,  lack  the  special  character  of  being  ap- 
parently newly  coined  words.  All  my  so-called 
neologisms  except  one  or  two  are  words  occur- 
ring in  some  language,  but  they  have  occurred  to 
my  mind  in  the  way  characteristic  of  neologisms 
in  general, — that  is,  they  have  come  up  in  appar- 
ent irrelevance  to  what  I  was  at  the  time  reading 
or  thinking. 

I  was  reading  an  encyclopaedia  article  on  Scot- 
tish-Gaelic Literature,  when  I  mentally  heard  the 
word  "  marred."  I  always  mentally  hear  these 
neologisms,  as  I  do  all  the  words  I  am  silently 
reading.  Furthermore,  there  is  no  articulatory 
movement,  innervation  or  imagery  in  my  silent 
reading.  A  sentence  in  the  article  read :  "  The 
beginning  is  marked."  One  might  naturally  say  I 
had  made  the  mistake  of  reading  "  marred  "  in 
place  of  "  marked,"  but  that  was  not  the  case,  as 
I  did  not  mentally  hear  "  The  beginning  was 
marred  "  or  get  any  such  sense  out  of  it,  or  try  to 
harmonise  "  marred  "  with  anything  I  was  read- 
ing. The  auditory  image  "  marred "  simply 
appeared  unannounced  in  consciousness,  and  at- 


EVERYDAY  LIFE  207 

tracted  my  attention  (as  all  the  others  have  done) 
by  its  apparent  irrelevance,  producing  much  the 
same  feeling  of  surprise  and  annoyance  that  I 
should  have  felt  if  someone  had  spoken  the  word 
in  a  loud  voice  in  a  quiet  room  where  I  was  read- 
ing to  myself.  The  explanation  of  this  neologism 
is,  I  believe,  in  the  fact  that  a  few  hours  before 
I  had  cut  the  first  finger  of  my  right  hand.  This 
damaging  of  the  first  is  ideationally  paralleled  in 
the  words  "  The  beginning  is  marred  "  and  the 
formation  of  neologisms  is  illustrated  by  the  fact 
that  letters  are  taken  from  any  number  of  words 
on  different  lines  and  combined  below  the  level  of 
consciousness,  and  delivered  already  assembled. 
This  neologism  is  manifestly  determined  at  least 
doubly  (it  is  of  course  impossible  to  tell  how 
manifold  are  the  determinations  that  have  escaped 
my  attention).  There  is  the  visual  "  mar  41  ed  " 
in  the  word  "  marked,"  and  there  is  an  "  r  "  in 
the  line  below,  completing  the  conventional  spell- 
ing of  the  word;  secondly,  there  is  the  idea  of 
the  beginning  or  first  and  the  first  finger.  I  can 
only  believe  that  my  mind  was  "  set "  to  read 
"  marred  ",  or  any  appropriate  anagram  in  the 
first  printed  page  that  caught  my  eye,  as  my  finger 
was  aching  and  had  two  bad  cuts  in  it,  and  I 
thought  it  was  seriously  damaged. 

An  illustration  of  the  multiple  determination  of 
the  neologism,  as  indeed  of  every  manifestation 


208   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

of  the  Unconscious,  is  the  word  "  coffin  "  which  I 
mentally  heard  as  I  glanced  at  the  following 
cyclopaedia  article: 

HANIFAH,  ha-ne'fa,  or  ABTT-HANIFAH  (702- 
72).  One  of  the  four  great  Mohammedan  Imams 
or  Church  fathers.  He  was  born  at  Kufa  on  the 
Euphrates,  and  became  founder  of  the  Hanifites, 
the  oldest  of  the  sects  of  Mohammedans  considered 
orthodox.  His  teachings  were  subsequently  formu- 
lated into  a  code  of  Mohammedan  law,  which  is 
still  in  force  in  many  parts  of  the  Ottoman  Empire. 
He  died  in  prison  at  Bagdad,  where  he  had  been 
placed  for  contumacy  in  refusing  the  office  of  Kadi, 
offered  him  by  the  Caliph,  and  declined  because  he 
thought  himself  unworthy  of  it. 

It  contains  the  letters  of  the  word  "  coffin  "  at 
least  five  times  and  "  box  "  once,  not  to  mention 
the  word  "  Kufa,"  which  sounds  something  like 
"  coffin." 

A  meeting  of  high-school  teachers  in  a  large 
city  was  addressed  by  a  professor  from  a  neigh- 
bouring college  on  the  opportunities  of  their  par- 
ticular subject,  which  for  illustration  we  shall  call 
Latin.  After  a  brief  period  introductory  of  his 
theme,  he  showed  that  he  was  getting  warmed  up 
to  his  subject  by  the  following  remark:  "It  is 
your  duty  to  inspire  your  teachers,"  and  hastily 
correcting  himself  he  said  "  pupils."  Why  did 
this  mistake  occur  ?  It  is  quite  likely  that  he  was 
thinking  that  it  was  his  duty  to  inspire  the  teachers 


EVERYDAY  LIFE  209 

who  were  present,  following  the  traditional  pater- 
nalistic trend  that  paralyses  our  modern  European 
society  brought  over  on  the  Mayflower,  which 
implies  that  the  teachers  were  to  be  regarded  as 
finished  and  finite  clods  untroubled  by  a  spark, 
and  that  the  spark  was  to  be  supplied  by  the  col- 
lege professor.  He  felt  that  he  had  to  inspire 
the  teachers,  because  in  his  exalted  position  he  had 
something  to  hand  down  to  the  assembled  high- 
school  teachers,  who  were  grubbing  along  in  fur- 
rows where  later  seeds  were  to  be  sown  by  the 
seminaries  of  the  colleges  and  universities.  His 
mind  was  so  full  of  the  duty  that  he  himself  had 
to  perform  that  it  cropped  out  in  the  slip  of  the 
tongue  that  I  have  recorded.  He  was  evidently 
thinking  of  his  self-imposed  task  of  inspiring  the 
teachers. 

I  stood  on  the  corner  of  the  street  on  which 
the  post  office  is  situated.  At  the  time  there  ap- 
peared no  reason  why  I  should  have  paused  there. 
When  I  got  home  I  found  I  was  out  of  stamps. 

The  impression  of  something  forgotten  is  quite 
familiar.  There  usually  is  something  forgotten. 
A  man  got  into  his  automobile,  and  went  to  his 
home  a  distance  of  nine  miles.  When  his  door 
was  opened  by  his  expectant  wife,  he  suddenly 
was  aware  of  having  forgotten  something,  but  he 
could  not  think  what  it  was.  His  wife's  first 
words  were :  "  Why,  where  is  Jennie?  "  He  had 


210    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

forgotten  his  own  daughter,  whom  he  was  to  call 
for  in  the  town  he  had  just  come  from,  and  take 
home  with  him. 

In  the  case  of  the  pausing  at  the  corner  of  the 
post  office  street,  I  could  have  perhaps  recollected 
what  was  lacking  if  I  had  been  at  the  time  awake  to 
the  fact  that  there  is  always  a  practical  reason  for 
such  apparently  unaccountable  actions.  But  the 
fact  was  that  I  did  not  fully  realise  that  I  had 
hesitated  until  later  and  then  the  post  office  was 
out  of  sight  and  so  out  of  mind. 

In  the  case  of  the  man  who  had  forgotten  to 
take  his  daughter  home  with  him,  we  should  have 
to  make  a  more  extended  analysis  before  we  should 
be  able  to  tell  just  why  at  that  particular  time  he 
wished  to  forget  his  daughter. 

On  many  occasions  the  Unconscious  gives  evi- 
dences of  an  ability  to  help  in  indirect  ways  in 
the  ordinary  details  of  daily  occupation.  I  was 
sitting  at  my  desk,  and  after  finishing  a  letter 
opened  a  drawer  to  get  a  stamp.  The  stamp  book 
was  not  in  the  drawer.  So  I  put  the  letter  in  the 
envelope,  addressed  it  and  laid  it  aside,  with  the 
thought  that  the  stamp  book  would  turn  up.  This 
very  thought  is  a  slight  indication  that  my  Un- 
conscious was  operating  with  a  view  of  showing 
me  where  the  stamp  book  was.  I  had  mislaid  it, 
and  I  knew  that  consciously  to  search  for  it  would 
generally  prove  useless  and  waste  time,  so  I  pro- 


EVERYDAY  LIFE  211 

ceeded  with  my  correspondence.  In  a  few  minutes 
something  impelled  me  to  move  certain  objects 
at  the  back  of  the  desk.  As  I  lifted  a  tray  con- 
taining pencils,  the  stamp  book  was  revealed. 

On  one  occasion  when  I  was  very  busy  and  un- 
willing to  be  interrupted,  I  was  asked  by  someone 
for  an  article  which  I  did  not  have  and  did  not 
know  where  it  could  be  found.  After  looking  in 
one  or  two  places  for  it,  I  said  it  might  be  found 
downstairs  and  I  ushered  the  gentleman  out  of 
my  room,  saying,  "  Going  downstairs  is  the  best 
thing  I  can  avoid  you,"  meaning  "  advise  you  to 
do."  My  Unconscious  had  a  very  slight  effort 
to  make,  to  change  the  word  advise  into  the  word 
avoid,  after  so  far  influencing  me  as  to  make  me 
suggest  to  the  gentleman  that  he  go  downstairs, 
which  if  I  had  thought  twice  about  my  form  of 
expression  I  should  have  probably  refrained  from 
mentioning. 

A  teacher  kept  a  boy  after  school  to  punish 
him  for  talking  at  an  inopportune  time.  The 
boy  said  that  if  he  stayed  he  would  lose  his  train. 
Teacher  said  that  if  he  had  wished  to  get  away 
on  time  he  should  have  behaved  better.  The  boy 
again  said  he  must  go  at  once  and  catch  his  train, 
as  he  had  to  do  some  work  at  home.  The  teacher 
paid  no  attention  and  the  boy  continued  for  a 
period  of  five  to  ten  minutes  to  repeat  that  he 
must  get  home  and  that  he  needed  to  do  work 


212   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

when  he  got  there.  The  teacher  then  said  he  did 
not  believe  the  boy,  and  the  boy  then  got  very  hot 
and  said  he  could  prove  it.  The  teacher  then  said 
that  the  more  the  boy  averred,  the  less  would 
anyone  believe,  because  they  would  think  that  the 
boy  felt  he  needed  much  asseveration  in  order  to 
create  a  belief.  After  the  discussion  the  teacher 
walked  home,  leaving  the  boy  in  the  school  guard- 
room, and  reflected  as  he  did  so  that  a  curious 
feature  of  his  mild  state  of  excitement  was  the 
use  of  numbers  in  the  following  sentence  with 
which  he  had  sought  to  impress  the  boy :  "  If  you 
say  a  thing  once,  perhaps  people  will  believe  you ; 
if  you  say  it  twice,  they  will  begin  to  disbelieve 
you;  if  you  say  it  three  times,  they  will  believe 
you  still  less,"  etc.  The  teacher  on  analysing  this 
climax-like  sentence  structure  from  the  psycho- 
analytic point  of  view  had  the  idea  suddenly  pre- 
sented to  him  that  he  was  in  reality  working  him- 
self up  to  a  pitch  of  excitement  by  means  of  those 
very  numbers,  once,  twice,  and  remembering  that 
all  excitement  is  fundamentally  one,  and  that  one 
is  designed  by  nature  to  increase  in  intensity  to 
an  acme  of  pleasure,  and  then  to  cease  by  virtue 
of  having  spent  itself,  he  suddenly  awoke  to  the 
trick  that  his  Unconscious  had  played  upon  him. 

An  example  of  symptomatic  actions  was  ob- 
served in  the  case  of  a  man  who  had  recently 
become  possessed  of  what  was  to  him  a  consider- 


EVERYDAY  LIFE  213 

able  sum  of  money.  This  instance  is  the  more 
remarkable  from  the  fact  that  he  had  frequently 
noticed  that  tradespeople  gave  him  too  much 
change.  The  analysis  of  why  tradespeople  do 
that  had  occupied  him  somewhat.  He  had  won- 
dered whether  they  intended  to  give  now  a 
dime  and  now  a  nickel  too  much  in  change  with 
the  idea  possibly  that  it  would  be  noticed  by  the 
customer  and  accepted  tacitly  as  a  sort  of  mild 
graft  which  would  be  an  inducement  to  continue 
to  deal  at  the  same  store.  On  the  occasion  of 
which  I  speak,  which  was  the  day  he  had  deposited 
quite  a  good-sized  check  to  his  credit  in  his  bank, 
he  went  across  the  street  to  pay  his  bill  at  the 
drug  store.  The  amount  of  it  was  six  dollars  and 
forty-five  cents.  Taking  out  the  forty-five  cents, 
as  he  supposed,  he  laid  it  on  the  counter.  He 
would  have  been  willing,  if  he  had  been  called 
away  suddenly,  to  swear  that  he  had  put  down 
a  quarter  and  two  dimes.  The  druggist  looked  at 
it  and  then  at  the  customer,  who  wondered  why 
he  did  not  take  it  until  he  saw  that  what  he  had 
laid  there  was  a  half-dollar  and  two  dimes.  This 
is  a  good  sign  that  the  man  in  question  had  un- 
consciously given  evidence  of  a  desire  to  give  out 
money,  a  characteristic  that  had  not  been  re- 
marked in  him  before  that  time.  Previous  to  that 
time  he  would  have  been  much  more  likely  to  give 
out  less  than  the  proper  amount,  by  mistake. 


214  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

A  man  in  leaving  for  his  business  one  morning 
took  out  of  the  change  pocket  of  his  overcoat  his 
elevated  railroad  ticket,  and  remarked  to  his 
wife  that  he  was  always  careful  to  buy  tickets  in 
advance,  so  as  not  to  have  to  get  them  in  the 
rush  of  the  morning  hour.  After  he  had  gone  a 
short  distance  toward  the  station,  he  again  put 
his  hand  into  his  pocket  and  from  the  same  place 
where  he  had  taken  out  the  ticket  to  show  his 
wife  he  found  the  switch  key  of  his  automobile, 
which  in  his  conscious  moments  he  had  intended 
to  leave  with  his  wife  so  that  she  might  have  the 
use  of  the  car  that  day.  We  see  here  a  good 
example  of  a  certain  type  of  mental  conflict.  On 
the  one  hand  he  wished  his  wife  to  have  the 
use  of  the  car,  but  there  had  been  at  one  time  quite 
an  unpleasant  feeling  connected  with  the  purchase 
of  that  particular  car  on  the  ground  that  it  had 
been  an  unnecessary  expense,  so  that  it  is  as- 
sumed that  there  was  still  in  the  Unconscious  a 
wish  that  she  should  not  have  the  use  of  it,  a  wish 
which  made  him  utterly  oblivious  of  the  fact  that 
he  had  the  key  in  his  pocket,  must  have  touched  it 
indeed,  when  he  was  making  the  utterly  uncalled 
for  display  of  his  foresight  and  his  ticket. 

No  more  impressive  testimony  of  the  inevita- 
bility of  our  thought  processes  has  been  given 
anywhere  in  the  history  of  philosophy  than  that 
offered  by  the  psychoanalysts  in  the  matter  of 


EVERYDAY  LIFE  215 

random  numbers.  Think  of  any  number  you 
please, — 41,  153,  or  any  other, — and  a  thorough 
analysis  will  show  that  you  could  not  have  thought 
of  any  other  number  at  that  time,  and  moreover 
will  show  you  just  why  you  happened  to  think  at 
the  time  of  that  particular  number.  Take,  for 
example, the  instance  given  by  Kaplan (Grundziige 
der  Psychoanalyse,  p.  15).  "  One  man  is  telling 
another  how  to  use  the  telephone.  '  You  ring  up 
central  and  say,  Main,  9871.'  The  number  is  an 
imaginary  one.  The  man  has  never  had  to  call  up 
such  a  number.  Why  did  he  happen  to  think  of 
this  number?"  The  explanation  is  as  follows: 
The  girl  he  is  in  love  with  lives  at  No.  9  in  a 
certain  street.  He  had  frequently  imagined  how 
pleasant  it  would  be  if  he  could  live  in  the  next 
house,  which  would  be  No.  7.  The  fact  that  this 
number  and  not  u,  the  number  of  the  house  next 
door  on  the  other  side,  was  chosen  is  explained  by 
the  fact  that  the  girl  has  recently  moved  into  a 
house  the  number  of  which  has  a  7  in  it.  The 
presence  of  the  figure  8  in  the  imaginary  number 
is  explained  on  the  ground  that  the  girl  was  not 
one  who  could  be  treated  with  any  suddenness, 
and  so  a  gradual  transition  from  7  to  9  had  to  be 
imagined.  Thus  the  number  8  was  indispensable. 
And  finally  i  is  accounted  for  on  the  ground  that 
the  man  in  question  wished  to  be  number  one  in  his 
own  home  that  he  had  created  in  his  fancy.  The 


216   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

numbers,  then,  that  make  up  the  imaginary  tele- 
phone call  are  each  one  closely  associated  with 
the  person  through  a  strong  interest;  hence  they 
are  the  first  to  occur.  Consequently  everyone  in 
calling  up  a  random  number  will  be  governed  by 
the  same  personal  interests  and  the  number  will 
be  furnished  ready  made  by  the  Unconscious. 
The  ease  with  which  anyone  can  call  off  imaginary 
numbers  is  well  known. 

Doing  two  things  at  once  is  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant symptomatic  actions  in  which  so  many 
people  persist.  Now  it  appears  that  in  doing  two 
things  at  once  we  are  splitting  our  psyche.  I  re- 
ferred in  an  earlier  section  to  the  distraction  of 
talking  with  someone  while  playing  the  piano. 
If  I  attempt  to  carry  on  a  conversation  with  an- 
other person  while  I  am  playing  on  the  piano  I 
am  giving  up  a  part  of  my  attention  to  the  music 
and  a  part  to  the  conversation.  The  splitting  in 
this  case  may  be  more  or  less  harmful  according 
to  my  skill  at  the  instrument.  If  I  am  a  very 
skilled  player  I  may  be  able  to  let  my  hands  wan- 
der over  the  keyboard  and  give  the  greater  amount 
of  attention  to  the  conversation,  because  the  play- 
ing has  become  automatic  with  me  and  does  not 
need  my  entire  attention.  But  if  this  is  so,  I  am 
gaining  nothing  by  continuing  to  play,  and  I  would 
in  all  cases  be  much  wiser  to  give  my  entire  atten- 
tion to  the  conversation.  This  is  not  merely  say- 


EVERYDAY  LIFE  217 

ing  again  the  good  old  adage  about  doing  one 
thing  at  a  time,  or  that  what  is  worth  doing  at  all 
is  worth  doing  well,  because  it  is  really  possible 
from  the  point  of  view  of  psychoanalysis  to  say 
more  than  that.  Not  only  is  what  is  worth  doing 
at  all  worth  doing  well,  but  any  inferiority  of 
performance  resulting  from  my  not  doing  a  thing 
as  well  as  I  can — that  is,  with  all  the  attention 
that  I  can  possibly  give  it — is  in  effect  allowing 
some  section  of  my  ego  to  function  apart  from 
some  other  section.  It  would  be  well  for  each  one 
of  us  to  examine  as  carefully  as  possible  his  own 
actions  with  regard  to  this  very  detail.  Are  we, 
while  doing  one  thing  physically,  such  as  climbing 
an  elevated  stairway,  either  mentally  or  physically 
taking  the  change  out  of  our  pocket  or  purse  to 
pay  for  the  ticket?  If  we  are  we  are  not  devoting 
all  the  psyche  unitedly  to  its  task,  which  was  climb- 
ing the  stairway,  and  a  division  takes  place,  which 
only  needs  to  be  carried  further  and  become  more 
ingrained  in  the  mental  system  to  produce  symp- 
toms very  similar  to  dementia-precox,  a  mental 
disease  which  is  also  called  schizophrenia  (from 
the  Greek  schizo,  I  split,  and  phren,  the  mind). 
Do  we  not  devote  our  entire  attention  to  the 
specific  task  we  have  before  us,  and  do  we  try 
to  overreach  toward  the  next  task  or  toward  the 
next  reward?  Do  you  read  the  newspaper  while 
you  are  eating  your  breakfast?  Or  while  driving 


218   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

your  motor  car?  It  will  of  course  be  objected 
immediately  that  one  of  these  is  very  easy  to  do, 
while  the  other  is  a  practical  impossibility.  But 
every  act  of  ours  all  day  long  may  be  measured 
upon  this  scale  of  greater  or  less  splitting  of  the 
attention  and  we  shall  find  out  that  in  some  things 
we  are  doing  it  more  and  in  some  things  less,  and 
further  it  will  be  evident  that  the  more  we  thus 
split  ourselves  the  less  are  we  accomplishing. 
This  is  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  we  think  we  are 
accomplishing  more  when  we  do  two  things  at 
once.  The  story  of  Julius  Caesar  being  able  to 
dictate  several  letters  at  once,  and  the  fact  that 
chess  players  can  play  so  many  games  at  the  same 
time  blindfolded  may  (or  may  not)  be  examples 
of  this  psychic  splitting.  We  do  not  know  how 
much  splitting  there  is  in  these  cases,  because  we 
do  not  know  how  complete  may  be  the  devotion  of 
attention  to  each  letter  separately  or  to  each  game 
separately.  A  complete  switching  off  of  the  atten- 
tion from  one  game,  to  centre  it  for  the  next  few 
minutes  solely  upon  another,  is  not  a  real  split- 
ting of  the  attention.  It  is  rather  a  succession  of 
strong  concentrations.  But  when  with  a  book  in 
hand  we  pretend  to  be  reading  and  allow  our 
minds  to  wander  to  other  subjects,  or  when  in  per- 
forming the  work  incident  to  one  occupation  we 
are  from  time  to  time  letting  our  thoughts  go  to 
extraneous  subjects,  we  are  doing  .what  is  de- 


EVERYDAY  LIFE  219 

scribed  in  another  part  of  this  book  as  mani- 
festing a  moral  conflict.  What  we  do,  we  ought 
so  fully  to  approve  of  consciously  that  we  are 
gratified  to  devote  all  our  energies  for  the  time 
to  that  one  pursuit  to  the  utter  exclusion  of  every 
other  thought.  The  performance  of  any  duty  in 
a  half-hearted  way  is  an  unmistakable  sympto- 
matic action.  It  shows  at  once  that  the  doer  of  it 
is  not  at  one  with  himself.  But  in  psychoanalytic 
language  this  state  is  expressed  by  saying  that  the 
craving  for  life,  for  love  and  for  activity  is  being 
dissipated,  that  the  unconscious  forces  are  not 
enlisted  on  the  side  of  the  person  so  acting  and 
that  they  are,  therefore,  as  it  were,  on  the  other 
side,  and  the  psyche  is  from  this  point  of  view 
like  two  horses  that  are  pulling  in  opposite  direc- 
tions, and  not  succeeding  in  making  progress  in 
any  direction. 


CHAPTER  XI 

PSYCHOTHERAPY 

A.  The  Moral  Struggle 

A  CONFLICT  arises  in  the  psyche  between  the  crav- 
ings of  the  Unconscious  and  the  restrictions  put 
upon  those  cravings  by  the  conventions  of  society, 
represented  as  these  restrictions  are  by  the  power 
called  the  censor  or  the  endopsychic  censor.  And 
as  the  conflict  is  between  the  organising  force  of 
society  on  the  one  hand  and  the  disorganising 
force  of  the  Titan,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  a  moral 
conflict.  The  effects  of  this  conflict  are  shown  in 
the  physical  condition  of  the  person  in  whose  psyche 
the  conflict  takes  place.  Thus,  to  take  a  concrete 
illustration,  a  man  for  certain  reasons  begins  to 
hate  his  wife,  and,  unconsciously  at  any  rate,  de- 
sires to  leave  her.  The  conventions  of  present- 
day  society  as  he  knows  them  prevent  him  from 
leaving  her  outright,  but  a  compromise  is  effected. 
He  leaves  her  symbolically.  Many  men  do  this 
by  having  as  little  to  do  with  their  wives  as  pos- 
sible. They  see  them  and  speak  to  them  as  infre- 
quently as  possible,  stay  away  from  home  as  much 

220 


PSYCHOTHERAPY  22! 

as  possible,  and  when  they  are  forced  by  circum- 
stances to  go  home  they  pay  as  little  attention  to 
them  as  they  can.  One  man  I  have  seen  never 
spoke  to  his  wife  even  at  table,  but  in  every  way 
completely  ignored  her.  These  are,  however,  con- 
scious acts  and  the  conflict  that  they  represent  is 
carried  on  in  the  open  and  is  fully  known  to  both 
parties.  But  the  conflict  that  goes  on  in  the  Un- 
conscious, instead  of  expressing  itself  in  the  wife- 
hating  man  in  petty  meannesses  such  as  I  have 
mentioned,  takes  the  form  of  some  kind  of  physical 
ill,  or,  as  it  is  expressed  in  psychoanalytic  language, 
becomes  subject  to  CONVERSION.  The  feelings  in- 
stead of  being  let  out  in  overt  acts  of  spite  and 
hatred,  are  bottled  up,  so  to  speak,  and  are  con- 
verted into  internal  injuries.  We  see  thus  the  out- 
working of  the  moral  conflict.  When  the  man 
expresses  his  hate  in  open  acts  he  hands  the  dam- 
age over  to  the  object  of  his  hate  and  suffers 
none  of  the  damage  himself,  except  what  comes  to 
him  indirectly,  through  not  having  things  go 
smoothly  in  his  home.  He  is  in  a  sense  egotistic  in 
so  doing,  for  he  might  have  been  altruistic  in  this 
sense.  He  might  have  kept  the  physical  injuries 
for  himself,  and  preserved  his  mate.  And  in  the 
concrete  illustration  of  which  I  spoke  at  the  begin- 
ning of  this  paragraph,  the  man  actually  did  keep 
his  physical  injury  to  himself.  He  did  it  uncon- 
sciously, to  be  sure,  and  from  that  point  of  view  it 


222   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

is  hard  to  ascribe  any  great  degree  of  merit  to  his 
specific  act.  He  became  blind.  He  accepted  a 
symbolical  separation  from  his  wife  in  place  of  a 
real  one.  The  effect  of  the  conflict  between  his 
desire  to  be  rid  of  his  wife  and  the  requirements 
of  the  community  in  which  he  was  living,  forced 
him,  according  to  his  understanding  of  those  re- 
quirements, to  keep  on  living  with  his  wife.  He 
made  a  compromise  with  society  however,  uncon- 
scious though  it  was.  He  was  to  continue  to  live 
with  his  wife  as  society  demanded,  but  in  compli- 
ance with  his  own  demands  he  was  not  to  live 
with  her.  He  would  live  with  her  as  far  as  hear- 
ing went  and  the  other  senses,  but  he  would  not 
live  with  her  visually.  The  only  way  that  can  be 
done  is  for  him  to  become  blind.  And  his  blind- 
ness was  a  purely  psychical  one.  Doctors  ex- 
amined him  and  found  nothing  the  matter  with  his 
eyes,  but  the  fact  remained  that  he  could  not  see. 
In  order  to  blind  himself  to  his  wife  he  had 
blinded  himself  to  everything.  Regarded  as  a 
moral  struggle  this  case  will  be  seen  to  be  altruistic, 
while  the  man  who  simply  cuts  his  wife  dead 
(metaphorically)  is  seen  to  be  the  selfish  one,  and 
the  man  who  suffered  blindness  rather  than  do 
actual  physical  harm  is  the  self-sacrificing  one. 
Now,  can  it  always  be  said  that  the  people  who 
show  out  their  feelings,  and  work  them  out  on 
other  people,  are  the  ones  who  have  solved  their 


PSYCHOTHERAPY  223 

moral  problems  correctly  because  they  have 
reached  their  solution  without  injuring  themselves  ? 
Can  it,  on  the  other  hand,  be  said  that  those  who 
have  solved  their  problems  by  swallowing  all  their 
difficulties,  and  saved  other  persons  from  being 
troubled  by  them,  are  the  ones  that  have  solved 
their  moral  problems  correctly?  There  seems  to 
be  no  possible  doubt  that  the  persons  who  pass 
over  their  ills  to  others  are  not  doing  what  is 
right.  Psychoanalysis  has  proved,  at  any  rate, 
that  nature  endeavours  to  make  man  altruistic  by 
forcing  him  unconsciously  to  keep  to  himself  the 
ills  that  he  might  pass  on  to  others  of  his  environ- 
ment. This  is  shown  by  the  high  proportion  of 
ills  of  this  kind  among  peoples  of  the  higher 
civilisations.  It  seems  quite  evident  that  the  more 
highly  organised  any  society  is,  the  more  numerous 
are  the  persons  in  it  who  carry  out  their  moral 
struggles  in  their  own  souls,  and  so  prevent  the 
damage  that  might  be  done  by  bringing  them  out 
into  the  gaze  of  their  neighbours.  In  other 
words,  the  more  highly  civilised  the  more  neurotics 
there  are.  The  more  the  mental  side  of  the  psyche 
is  developed  the  more  are  the  people  who  solve 
their  moral  problems  mentally.  And  this  seems 
quite  as  it  should  be,  because  moral  problems  are 
not  physical  ones.  Moral  problems  must  be 
solved  in  the  intellect. 

The  striking  feature  of  this  contrast  between 


224  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

the  archaic  uncivilised  trends  in  the  Unconscious 
and  the  continual  working  of  society  upon  the 
individual,  is  the  high  ethical  standpoint  which  it 
is  necessary  to  take  in  viewing  all  the  conflicts 
that  arise.  In  the  censor  we  have  in  us  a  repre- 
sentative of  the  restraining,  directing  force  which 
society  exerts  upon  us.  It  needs  but  a  glance  at 
the  origin  of  the  word  moral  to  see  that,  as  it  is 
derived  from  the  Latin  mos,  moris,  which  means 
custom,  the  central  idea  of  the  word  has  been  that 
acts  that  are  of  such  a  nature  that  they  could  be- 
come customary  for  all  persons  without  detriment 
to  any,  are  the  only  acts  that  could  really  be  called 
moral.  This  implies  that  these  acts  must  be  such 
as  to  further  the  progress  of  society  as  an  organ- 
ised system,  and  shows  that  nothing  that  we  can 
think  or  do  fails  to  be  censored,  so  to  speak,  by 
that  representative  within  us  of  the  spirit  of  social 
evolution  which  alone  makes  for  progress.  So 
that  we  see  that  every  conflict  between  the  con- 
scious life  which  is  the  directed  thinking,  and  the 
unconscious  life  which  is  the  so-called  phantasy- 
ing,  is  really  an  ethical  struggle.  This  means  that 
any  lack  of  adjustment  to  our  environment  which 
shows  itself  in  peculiarities  of  behaviour,  of  what- 
ever nature  these  peculiarities  may  be,  is  the  result 
of  the  opposition  set  up  by  the  Unconscious  toward 
the  restraints  of  society.  This  opposition  is  de- 
scribed as  a  conflict  between  two  opposing  wishes. 


PSYCHOTHERAPY  225 

The  simplest  illustration  of  it  is  the  situation  men- 
tioned by  Holt.*  "  Wishes  conflict  when  they 
would  lead  the  body  into  opposed  lines  of  conduct, 
for  it  is  clear  that  the  body  cannot  at  the  same 
time,  say,  lie  abed  and  yet  be  hurrying  to  catch 
a  train;  and  this  is  the  source  of  conflict  in  all 
cases,  even  those  where  the  actual  physical  inter- 
ference is  too  subtle  to  be  detected." 

The  detection  of  the  actual  physical  interfer- 
ence is  exactly  what  Freud  and  his  school  have 
been  most  successful  in  doing,  and  they  have  shown 
in  great  detail  in  some  instances  where  and  how 
the  physical  interference  takes  the  form,  not  only 
of  a  mental  disturbance,  so  great  as  to  make  the 
sufferer,  who  is  the  battle  ground  of  the  conflict, 
unable  to  continue  to  do  his  work  in  society,  but, 
what  seems  to  the  ordinary  person  so  utterly  far- 
fetched, they  have  attempted  to  show  how  the 
moral  conflict  has  become  manifest  in  a  physical 
defect.  Pfister  tells  of  a  girl  who  suffered  from 
swollen  lips.  The  swelling  was  an  expression  of 
the  moral  question  as  to  the  propriety  of  the  girl 
in  allowing  herself  to  be  kissed  by  a  certain  man. 
Even  the  thought  of  this  action,  which,  in  her 
heart  the  girl  disapproved,  was  enough  to  cause 
the  lips  to  swell.  Does  that  seem  ridiculous?  It 
is  no  more  unlikely  than  that  she  should  have 
blushed.  If  blushing  is  a  reaction  of  a  purely 

*  The  Freudian  Wish,  p.  5. 


226   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

physical  nature  to  a  purely  mental  stimulus,  why 
should  we  not  admit  the  possibility  of  a  rush  of 
blood  to  the  lips,  just  as  readily  as  we  admit  the 
possibility  of  a  rush  of  blood  to  the  cheeks,  as  a 
result  of  a  moral  struggle?  Is  not  every  blush 
a  sign  of  a  moral  conflict?  If  this  purely  physical 
condition  is  always  caused  by  purely  mental  states, 
is  it  not  quite  likely  that  other  changes  in  circula- 
tion, in  other  parts  of  the  body,  may  be  caused  by 
conditions  quite  as  exclusively  mental  as  this 
change?  And  if  we  can  see  this  interplay  of 
mental  and  physical  before  our  very  eyes  in  the 
act  of  blushing,  have  we  any  right  to  doubt  that 
a  similar  interplay  of  physical  and  mental  may  take 
place  in  parts  of  the  body  that  we  cannot  see?  If 
the  act  of  blushing  is  so  clearly  a  case  of  mind 
influencing  body  because  it  is  so  instantaneous,  is 
it  not  conceivable  that  there  is  also  a  much  more 
slow  and  subtle  influence  being  exerted  continu- 
ously upon  our  bodies  by  our  minds?  A  woman 
relative  of  Goethe  was  noticed  by  that  keen  ob- 
server to  have  an  attack  of  eczema  on  her  neck  and 
breast  whenever  she  was  required  to  put  on  a  de- 
collete costume.  It  is  as  if  she  had  reasoned  uncon- 
sciously that  it  was  not  moral,  in  a  broad  sense,  to 
expose  that  part  of  her  body  and  that  if  she  had 
an  attack  of  eczema,  either  she  would  not  be 
obliged  to  do  so,  or  that  her  sin  would  be  less  if 
she  presented  to  the  world  a  less  attractive  epi- 


PSYCHOTHERAPY  227 

dermis.  It  matters  not  at  all  whether  she  was 
correct  in  her  reasoning,  for  in  the  realm  of  the 
interplay  of  mental  and  physical  strange  fallacies 
are  found.  It  would  be  enough  that  she  thought 
her  action  was  improper.  The  ethical  conflict 
takes  place  between  the  opposing  thoughts  of  the 
person.  What  the  thoughts  are  is  determined  by 
the  bringing  up  of  the  person. 

Another  instance  of  the  effect  of  the  mind  on 
the  body,  showing  again  the  moral  struggle,  is  the 
case  of  the  man  who  was  suffering  from  an  at- 
tack of  exophthalmic  goitre.  He  was  a  doctor, 
but  that  fact  is  not  so  very  remarkable,  after  all, 
considering  that  the  majority  of  doctors  still  think 
the  mind,  has  very  little  effect  upon  the  body  in 
causing  disease.  An  analyst  asked  the  doctor  in 
question  abruptly  how  much  money  he  had  lost. 
The  doctor  had  lost  four  thousand  dollars,  a  loss 
of  which  the  analyst  could  not  possibly  have  been 
aware.  What  can  be  the  connection  between  ex- 
ophthalmic goitre  and  the  loss  of  money?  In  the 
present  state  of  psychoanalytic  knowledge  it  is  im- 
possible to  answer  this  question  definitely,  except 
to  say  that  a  connection  has  been  observed  be- 
tween the  activities  of  the  thyroid  gland,  which 
are  in  this  disease  always  increased,  and  the  men- 
tal state  with  regard  to  the  financial  question  as 
affecting  the  sufferer. 

I  have  given  here  three  illustrations  of  the 


228    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

effect  of  mind  over  body,  two  of  them  concerned 
in  the  causation  of  disease.  The  doctors  in  gen- 
eral will  doubt  the  mental  causation  of  the  eczema, 
and  will  ridicule  the  idea  that  a  moral  struggle  has 
anything  to  do  with  the  activities  of  the  thyroid 
gland.  Possibly  even  the  unprejudiced  reader  may 
be  sceptical  about  the  morality  or  immorality  of 
contracting  any  disease.  But  the  doctors  tell  us 
we  should  not  worry,  that  worry  and  strain  pro- 
duce or  at  any  rate  favour  the  hardening  of  the 
arteries,  and  though  they  admit  that  there  may  be 
a  contributing  cause  from  the  mental  side,  they 
have  as  a  rule  left  that  side  uninvestigated.  It  is 
the  merit  of  the  Freudian  psychoanalysts  that  they 
have  given  this  question  their  undivided  attention 
for  a  quarter  of  a  century  and  that  they  are  in  a 
position  to  offer  some  real  facts  as  a  result  of 
their  investigations.  Their  results  have  for  the 
most  part  been  ignored  by  physicians  and  by  non- 
medical  people  alike  for  two  reasons.  In  the  first 
place  the  connections  between  disease  and  men- 
tality are  so  complicated  that  it  requires  an  ex- 
tremely refined  technique  to  trace  them  out,  impos- 
sible for  the  ordinary  person  not  acquainted  with 
the  description  of  the  different  diseases,  and  the 
details  of  their  symptoms.  This  elaborate  tech- 
nique, which  would  be  almost  impossible  for  the 
non-medical  person,  is  difficult  for  the  physician, 
because  of  the  great  amount  of  time  necessary  to 


PSYCHOTHERAPY  229 

acquaint  himself  with  the  principles  of  psycho- 
analysis, as  applied  to  the  cure  of  certain  diseases. 
Most  physicians  now  having  a  good  practice  of 
their  own  have  not  that  amount  of  time  at  their 
disposal.  In  the  second  place  the  results  of  the 
investigations  of  the  Freudian  school  have  been 
ignored  both  by  patient  and  by  physician  for  the 
very  reason  stated  at  the  beginning  of  this  book, — 
namely,  that  the  cause  of  a  good  proportion  not 
only  of  the  mental  but  also  of  the  physical  dis- 
orders which  humanity  suffers  is  a  struggle  be- 
tween conventional  morality,  used  here  in  the 
sense  of  social  ethical  behaviour,  and  the  in- 
stincts and  impulses  which  are  continually  being 
sent  up  to  us  from  the  Unconscious,  from  the 
archaic  representative  in  us  of  the  aeons  of  evolu- 
tion through  which  we  have  passed  in  our  descent 
from  our  primate  and  cave-man  ancestors.  This 
moral  struggle,  the  conflict  which  is  the  most 
closely  connected  with  our  most  intimate  nature, 
where  morality  and  immorality  most  closely  touch 
us,  naturally  centres  about  our  sexual  life.  This 
is  the  reason  why  there  has  been  developed  so 
great  a  resistance  toward  the  Freudian  theories. 
What  more  likely  than  that  man  should  be  unwill- 
ing to  have  his  sexual  life  minutely  examined,  and 
be  told  that  its  unconscious  abnormalities  are  the 
cause  of  a  good  part  of  his  ills.  Humanity  would 
much  prefer  to  have  the  ills  continue  than  to  be 


23o   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

cured  in  this  fashion.  It  requires  a  great,  an  almost 
impossible  amount  of  fortitude  for  any  one  of  us 
to  submit  to  this  mental  surgery.  We  instinctively 
shrink  from  the  circumstances  of  a  physical  surgi- 
cal operation,  the  fasting,  the  anaesthetic — I  need 
not  particularise  further!  Quite  as  instinctively 
do  we  shrink  from  the  analogous  preparations  for 
the  psychical  surgery,  in  which  we  submit,  so  to 
speak,  to  an  operation  which  unfolds  the  secret 
springs  of  our  being.  And  yet  the  time  is  not 
very  far  distant  when  the  general  medical  practi- 
tioner will  say  to  his  patient :  "  I  am  unable  to 
find  anything  serious  the  matter  with  your  heart  or 
your  lungs  or  your  kidneys.  It  is  true,  your  health 
is  not  good.  You  are  certainly  not  able  to  carry 
on  your  business."  To  this,  formerly,  he  would 
have  added  that  perhaps  a  change  for  the  better 
might  follow  a  trip  south  or  north  or  east  or  west, 
or  a  complete  rest  might  be  a  benefit.  This  trip  or 
this  rest,  however,  is  not  always  convenient  or 
possible,  and  its  mental  effect  on  some  people  is 
anything  but  reassuring.  I  have  seen  the  despair 
of  persons  who  have  been  told  to  go  to  a  different 
climate  in  order  to  cure  themselves  of  tuberculosis. 
But  in  time  to  come  and  not  far  distant  the  medi- 
cal adviser,  on  finding  a  patient  without  good 
health,  but  with  all  the  material  for  producing 
good  health,  viz.:  good  physique  and  no  serious 
organic  defect,  will  say  to  his  patient:  "  What  you 


PSYCHOTHERAPY  231 

need  is  to  be  analysed.  Go  to  Dr.  Blank,  and  I 
think  he  will  be  able  to  help  you."  This  piece  of 
advice  will  be  all  the  more  acceptable  to  this  pa- 
tient because  in  going  to  Dr.  Blank  he  will  not 
have  to  leave  his  business  to  take  care  of  itself. 
This  is  because  the  prime  object  of  psychoanalysis 
is  to  make  the.patient  capable  not  only  of  the  work 
that  he  has  been  doing  in  society  but,  in  the  end, 
more  of  the  same  work.  In  other  words,  it  seeks 
to  develop  the  power  of  the  individual  to  increase 
his  activities  rather  than  to  diminish  them.  This 
development  can  generally  be  best  carried  out  in 
the  environment  in  which  the  patient  found  him- 
self incapacitated.  It  is  again  a  case  of  moral  con- 
flict. The  man  or  the  woman  has  literally  become 
sick  of  the  work  they  were  doing  and  it  is  the 
task  of  the  psychoanalyst  to  discover  the  reasons 
for  the  moral  struggle  and  enable  the  patient  to 
take  up  the  work  he  has  found  so  pathogenic  and 
do  it  (and  more  too),  right  in  the  same  place,  if 
possible.  Persons  who  are  directed  by  others  in 
such  a  way  as  to  have  little  responsibility  and 
therefore  little  moral  struggle  are  less  likely,  par- 
ticularly if  they  are  very  hard-worked  and  do 
their  work  cheerfully  and  conscientiously,  to  be  so 
detrimentally  affected  by  the  ethical  conflict.  It 
may  almost  be  said — in  fact  I  think  I  have  myself 
heard  such  persons  say — that  they  have  no  time 
to  be  sick.  If  it  is  true  that  worry  and  not  work 


232   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

kills,  then  it  may  be  as  truly  said  that  we  are  killed 
by  our  own  unemployed  energies.  That  is,  in 
fact,  just  what  the  newer  psychology  has  taught 
us,  and  in  very  definite  terms.  For  the  continual 
craving  for  life,  love  and  activity,  which  is  as 
constant  and  insistent  as  the  heartbeat  and  the 
sunlight,  never  leaves  us  and  .like  an  undirected 
stream  of  water  does  damage  where  if  directed  it 
might  water  a  garden  or  put  out  a  fire,  or,  if  great 
enough,  run  a  mill.  We  must  be  active  all  our 
waking  hours.  Not  only  that,  but  we  must  morally 
approve,  not  to  say  outright  love,  all  we  do. 
These  two  requirements  insure  the  presence  of 
the  third.  The  activity  and  the  love  being  present 
make  the  life  full  and  wholesome,  and  none  of 
the  diseases  that  are  engendered  by  unwholesome 
doubts  as  to  the  moral  propriety  of  the  acts  can 
trouble  us. 

If  this  very  schematic  statement  were  adequate 
completely  to  describe  the  facts,  the  whole  thing 
would  be  quite  simple.  We  should  then  only  have 
to  review  our  daily  activities,  and  if  we  could  not 
approve  of  them  with  a  clear  conscience,  we  should 
change  them  and  do  others  that  we  could  approve 
of,  and  all  would  go  well.  But  it  is  not  so  simple 
as  that,  for  the  reason  that  we  do  not  ourselves 
know  in  some  cases  what  we  really  do  morally  ap- 
prove of.  The  unconscious  factor  enters  here  as 
everywhere.  We  are  prone  to  state  one  belief 


PSYCHOTHERAPY  233 

and  really  hold  quite  a  different  one  in  our  Uncon- 
scious. That  is  one  of  the  ways  in  which  the 
Unconscious  deceives  us.  I  may  instance  the  be- 
lief held  by  most  men  that  they  are  not  influenced 
in  their  choice  of  a  woman  to  marry  by  the  image 
of  their  own  mother,  which  has  changed  for  them 
the  appearance  of  every  other  woman  on  the  face 
of  the  earth.  They  think  they  form  independent 
opinions,  but  they  really  do  not.  Similarly  they 
think  that  they  morally  approve  or  disapprove  of 
a  given  action  when  psychoanalysis  will  show  that 
they  are  saying  the  opposite  of  what  is  really  true, 
and  have  deceived  themselves  by  frequent  assev- 
eration. 

It  is,  then,  only  through  a  complete  and  scientific 
analysis  carried  out  in  the  manner  that  has  been 
indicated  in  the  chapter  on  dreams  that  one  can 
really  get  a  true  knowledge  of  what  one  morally 
believes,  and  remove  the  self-deceptions  that  have 
been  accumulating  for  years. 

B.  Reasoning  by  'Analogy 

James,  in  his  Psychology ,  notes  that  "  some 
people  are  far  more  sensitive  to  resemblances, 
and  far  more  ready  to  point  out  wherein  they 
consist,  than  others  are.  They  are  the  wits,  the 
poets,  the  inventors,  the  scientific  men,  the  prac- 
tical geniuses.  A  native  talent  for  perceiving  anal- 


234   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

ogles  is  reckoned  by  Professor  Bain,  and  by  others 
before  and  after  him,  as  the  leading  fact  in  genius 
of  every  order"  (Vol.  I,  p.  530).  The  basis  of 
all  classification  is  the  degree  of  resemblance  in 
the  things  classified.  To  classify  a  man  as  a  mur- 
derer makes  us  act  differently  toward  him  from 
the  way  we  would  act  if  we  did  not  classify  him  as 
such.  The  pacifists'  greatest  argument  is  the 
classification  of  war  as  murder.  Everyone  acts 
according  to  his  perceptions,  and  his  perceptions 
are  nothing  but  classifications.  Errors  are  wrong 
classifications.  In  acting  erroneously  we  act  as  if 
we  were  faced  by  one  set  of  circumstances,  whereas 
we  are  confronted  with  quite  another.  We  have 
classified  the  circumstances  wrongly.  A  boy  went 
out  one  evening  with  a  newly  acquired  shotgun  to 
amuse  himself  with  it  by  shooting  bats.  The  first 
thing  he  shot  was  a  Cecropia  moth  whose  flight 
he  mistook  for  that  of  a  bat.  As  the  motions  of 
the  two  are  not  very  similar,  it  showed  that  his 
discrimination  was  not  very  fine.  In  the  act  of 
classification  which  this  boy  performed  probably 
in  his  Unconscious,  he  saw  only  the  similarity  be- 
tween the  moth  and  the  bat,  and  acted  as  if  the 
moth  were  a  bat.  He  was  really  quite  chagrined 
when  he  discovered  that  he  had  wasted  his  powder 
and  shot  on  a  mere  insect.  It  is  quite  the  same 
with  all  of  us.  Our  actions  from,  minute  to  min- 
ute are  reactions  to  our  environment  which  we  are 


PSYCHOTHERAPY  235 

continuously  classifying.  This  daily  activity  of 
ours  proceeds  upon  the  principle  that  we  have 
evolved  classes  of  actions  which  we  perform  as 
reactions  to  certain  classes  of  circumstances.  This 
evolving  of  a  classification  of  all  the  circumstances 
in  which  we  have  found  ourselves  is  the  every- 
day philosophy  which  we  have  developed  for  the 
guidance  of  our  lives.  It  is  true  that  this  philos- 
ophy may  never  have  been  consciously  evolved 
and  therefore  is  not  really  entitled  to  be  called  a 
true  philosophy  of  life,  which  should  be  the  con- 
scious thinking  out  of  all  our  behaviour.  The 
best  equipped  people  for  the  competition  of  life 
are  those  who  have  made  up  their  minds  exactly 
what  they  are  going  to  do  in  every  emergency. 
The  most  experienced  individuals  are  those  who 
have  worked  out  their  classifications  of  action  and 
can  be  depended  upon  to  react  in  a  uniform  man- 
ner to  the  various  incidents  of  their  occupations. 
If  a  teller  in  a  bank  accepts  for  deposit  a  bank- 
note which  is  a  counterfeit,  he  shows  by  this  act 
that  he  has  classified  the  bill  wrongly.  Everyone 
reasons  all  the  time,  in  making  these  classifications, 
in  a  manner  that  is  called  reasoning  by  analogy. 
New  classifications  are  always  responded  to  with 
new  modes  of  action.  An  inability  to  make  a  satis- 
factory classification  results  in  disconcerted  action, 
whereas  the  quick  diagnosing  of  an  occurrence  re- 
sults in  a  speedy  and  appropriate  course  of  action. 


236   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

In  an  epidemic  of  infantile  paralysis,  for  instance, 
people  will  act  according  as  they  believe  the  dis- 
ease contagious  or  not.  If  I  classify  it  in  my  own 
mind  as  contagious  I  will  avoid  contact  with  the 
persons  whom  I  suspect  of  having  it.  In  all  this 
classification,  and  indeed  in  every  other  kind, 
which  means  in  every  act  of  my  waking  life,  I  am 
controlled  in  my  actions  by  the  principle  of  rea- 
soning by  analogy.  Even  in  the  syllogisms  of 
formal  logic,  we  are  at  the  mercy  of  this  analogi- 
cal reasoning  in  the  selection  of  the  propositions 
which  we  are  to  use  as  our  major  and  our  minor 
premises.  Upon  the  correct  classification  of  the 
concepts  used  in  the  propositions  depends  not  of 
course  the  formal  validity  but  the  actual  value  of 
the  conclusion.  And  it  is  the  actual  value  of  the 
conclusion  that  is  to  govern  us  in  our  actions. 
Thus  it  is  plain  that  in  our  conscious  life  the  really 
dynamic  results  of  our  thinking, — namely,  our 
acts, — which  make  or  mar  ourselves  and  our 
neighbours,  are  all  caused  by  the  faculty  which 
we  have  of  seeing  resemblances.  If  in  our  walk  of 
life  we  do  not  see  the  resemblance  of  certain  cir- 
cumstances to  dangerous  ones  that  we  have  previ- 
ously experienced,  or  heard  of  or  seen  others  fall 
into,  we  may  ourselves  fall  into  a  ditch,  meta- 
phorically speaking,  from  which  it  may  cause  us 
no  little  trouble  and  expense  to  extricate  ourselves. 
Now,  if  it  is  plain  that  in  every  act  of  our  daily 


PSYCHOTHERAPY  237 

life  we  are  governed  by  our  feeling  of  the  analogy 
between  experiences,  based  upon  their  resem- 
blances, which  resemblances  enable  us  to  classify 
each  factor  of  our  environment  in  turn  and  act  in 
accordance  with  such  classification,  it  is  a  necessary 
corollary  of  this  that  if  we  realize  that  we  have 
made  a  mistake, — that  is,  a  wrong  classification, — 
we  may  correct  our  mistake  the  next  time  that 
such  a  set  of  circumstances  arises.  This  is  the 
privilege  of  the  conscious  activity.  If,  however, 
we  were  of  such  a  nature  that  we  had  no  ability 
to  correct  our  mistakes,  which  means  to  reclassify 
that  portion  of  experience  to  which  we  have  re- 
acted erroneously,  and,  the  next  time  we  met  a 
similar  emergency,  to  act  in  a  different  manner 
involving  less  loss  and  more  gain  to  ourselves,  we 
should  be  in  a  state  worse  than  most  animals, 
which  are  generally  able  to  profit  by  their  experi- 
ence. Thus  our  progress  in  efficiency  in  dealing 
with  the  world  of  reality  is  made  possible  by  a  con- 
scious readjustment.  In  fact,  that  is  the  supreme 
function  of  consciousness  in  animate  life.  But  it 
is  the  conscious  part  of  our  psyche  which  makes 
these  readjustments.  The  necessity  for  such  re- 
adjustments is,  according  to  Bergson,  the  cause 
of  the  appearance  of  consciousness  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  the  race. 

Now,  it  has  been  shown  by  the  newer  psychol- 
ogy that  this  reasoning  by  analogy  is  a  character- 


238    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

istic  feature  of  the  Unconscious  Titan  within  us. 
Just  as  the  origin  of  consciousness  in  the  evolu- 
tion of  man  dates  somewhere  back  aeons  ago  from 
the  time  when  a  new  adjustment  to  environ- 
ment was  necessary  and  marks  an  advance 
in  evolution  far  greater  in  its  effects  than 
anything  that  had  gone  before  it,  so  this  recog- 
nition that  reasoning  by  analogy  is  a  characteristic 
of  the  Unconscious,  and  that  the  conscious  read- 
justment to  environment  is  the  strongest  factor 
in  present-day  social  evolution,  is  a  step  in  advance 
greater  than  any  step  that  has  been  taken  since  the 
intervention  of  consciousness  in  the  unconscious 
life  of  the  early  stages  of  evolution.  The  Un- 
conscious is  reasoning  by  analogy  all  the  time,  if  it 
can  be  said  to  reason  at  all,  and  just  because  it  is 
unconscious  it  is  unable  to  make  the  necessary  cor- 
rections and  readjustments  which  would  lead  it 
into  a  closer  connection  with  social  evolution 
which  is  of  course  a  higher  form  of  evolution  than 
the  merely  physical. 

This  uncorrected  reasoning  by  analogy  is  at 
the  bottom  of  the  symbolisms  that  we  find  in  the 
Unconscious  and  is  the  cause  of  the  conversion  of 
the  moral  struggle  from  the  sphere  of  the  purely 
mental  to  that  of  the  physical,  as  is  seen  in  the 
symptoms  of  certain  diseases.  Take,  for  instance, 
the  psychic  blindness  of  the  man  referred  to  in  a 
previous  paragraph.  The  Unconscious  acts  on  the 


PSYCHOTHERAPY  239 

analogy,  on  the  one  hand,  between  death  and  dis- 
appearance and,  on  the  other  hand,  on  that  be- 
tween disappearance  and  invisibility.  The  hated 
wife's  not  being  seen  is  analogous  to  her  not  being 
perceptible  to  any  other  sense,  which  is  quite 
analogous  to  her  not  existing  at  all.  Freud  calls 
attention  to  the  fact  that  a  child's  idea  of  death  is 
merely  an  idea  of  disappearance,  and  that  when 
a  child's  dreams  show  a  wish  for  the  death  of  a 
parent  of  the  opposite  sex  it  signifies  no  more  than 
that  the  child  unconsciously  wishes  for  the  dis- 
appearance of  the  parent. 

A  loss  of  voice  on  the  part  of  one  patient  was 
observed  to  be  coincident  with  the  absence  of  her 
lover.  During  these  absences  she  was  able  to 
write  a  comparatively  good  letter.  It  is  inferred 
that  the  Unconscious  of  the  girl,  reasoning  by 
analogy,  took  the  inability  to  speak  with  her  lover 
(on  account  of  his  absence  in  another  town,  pre- 
sumably out  of  reach  of  telephone  connection)  as 
similar  to  the  inability  to  speak  at  all.  Further- 
more, her  ability  to  write  to  him  was  extended, 
still  on  the  principle  of  analogy  to  an  ability  to 
write  other  things,  or  at  any  rate  to  write  them 
better  than  when  he  was  within  speaking  distance. 
Another  case  of  psychic  blindness,  reported  by 
Coriat  (The  Meaning  of  Dreams,  p.  173),  in 
the  case  of  a  little  girl,  was  upon  analysis  found 
to  rest  upon  an  analogy,  the  basis  of  similarity 


24o   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

being  the  following  thoughts.  She  did  not  want 
to  have  any  care  of  her  younger  brothers  and  sis- 
ters. She  knew  that  if  she  were  blind  she  could 
not  see  to  do  various  things  for  them,  etc.  In 
other  words,  blindness  is  like  inability,  which  is  in 
turn  like  irresponsibility.  She  did  not  wish  to  be 
responsible  for  the  family  nor  to  do  for  them,  a 
state  of  mind  quite  natural  in  some  children,  and 
her  moral  nature  had  not  accepted  the  principle  of 
self-sacrifice.  The  very  interesting  point  about 
her  case  in  this  connection  is  that  the  method  fol- 
lowed to  produce  a  cure  was  also  based  on  the 
reasoning  by  analogy.  The  thoughts  presented  to 
her  which  changed  her  classifications  and  her  point 
of  view  were  that  seeing  is  like  the  return  to  life 
of  her  playing  with  her  schoolmates,  a  return  of 
her  sight  is  like  a  return  of  her  playmates  who 
were  to  her  during  her  blindness  like  persons  that 
had  left  her  life.  Regaining  her  sight  was  like 
regaining  a  part  of  her  own  life,  i.e.  her  happy 
times  in  play  with  her  companions. 

We  get  from  this  the  conclusion  that  just  as  in 
conscious  life  we  classify,  by  means  of  analogy, — 
that  is,  similarities, — a  set  of  circumstances  as  a 
situation  in  which  we  generally  act  in  a  certain 
manner  and  we  act  as  if  it  were  such  a  situation, 
so  does  the  Unconscious  in  a  certain  situation 
respond  as  if  it  were  in  the  situation  in  which  it 
has  classified  itself  as  being.  But  as  the  Un- 


PSYCHOTHERAPY  241 

conscious  in  its  methods  of  classification  of  experi- 
ences is  acting  without  the  light  of  the  conscious 
reason,  and  as  its  categories  are  few  and  simple, 
the  result  of  this  mode  of  unconscious  thought, 
which  is  hardly  to  be  compared  to  conscious  rea- 
soning because  of  its  lack  of  fine  discriminations 
which  characterise  conscious  reasoning  only,  is  a 
result  which  appears  to  conscious  reasoning  when 
it  is  viewed  by  the  latter  as  a  very  crude  and 
illogical  process.  In  the  actions  of  the  mother 
toward  the  child  the  male  Unconscious  dimly 
glimpses  something  that  satisfies  in  early  infancy 
all  its  cravings,  in  childhood  most  of  them,  and 
in  manhood  many  of  them.  What  more  natural, 
then,  than  that  when  the  man  comes  to  pick  out 
a  wife,  he  should,  in  acceptance  of  the  aged  dictum 
that  love  is  blind,  resign  his  destiny  to  fate,  which 
in  the  matter  of  selection  is  the  Unconscious,  and 
that  the  Unconscious  should  with  coarse  discrimi- 
nation feel:  "This  woman  is  like  the  woman 
from  whom  I  used  to  receive  so  many  comforts, 
this  woman  is  the  woman  from  whom  I  received 
so  many  comforts.  This  is  the  woman  for  me  "  ? 
And  it  does  not  seem  to  matter  in  what  particular 
the  woman  chosen  to  be  life  mate  resembles  the 
mother.  It  may  be  but  the  tone  of  a  voice  or  the 
turn  of  a  nose,  the  shape  of  a  hand  or  a  mild 
complacency  toward  the  world  (an  easy  compli- 
ance with  the  importunities  of  mankind  is  a  potent 


242   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

factor  common  to  mother  and  wife!).  It  seems 
in  some  cases  that  the  grounds  for  perception  of 
similarity  may  be  exceedingly  few.  Reasoning  by 
analogy  may  require  only  one  similar  trait.  The 
Unconscious  reacts,  we  cannot  call  it  reasoning, 
according  to  primeval  modes  of  action.  Cross- 
ing a  street' full  of  automobiles  I  have  felt  an 
impulse  to  run  and  dodge  as  huge  limousines  bore 
down  upon  me,  and  I  was  obliged  to  recognise  in 
the  impulse  an  archaic  tendency  (often  seen  in 
children  crossing  a  street  full  of  traffic),  a  tend- 
ency to  run  when  some  large  thing  approaches. 
To  the  groping  Titan  within,  the  big  automobile  is 
like  a  monster  animal  rushing  upon  it,  and  its 
first  impulse  is  to  run  away.  In  bathing  in  the 
surf  I  have  had  to  teach  myself  (that  is,  my  Un- 
conscious) to  do  the  opposite  of  almost  everything 
that  my  instincts  prompted  me  to  do. 

Now,  if  it  is  clear  in  what  crude  modes  the  un- 
conscious mental  processes  take  place,  it  will  be 
clear  also  what  illogical  results  are  achieved  by 
them  when  the  interaction  of  mind  and  body  is 
involved.  It  has  long  been  recognised  that  people 
can  make  themselves  sick  by  worrying  about  a 
thing  that  they  ought  to  do,  and  Freud  has  pointed 
out  the  strong  motives  that  many  persons,  espe- 
cially women,  have  for  getting  sick, — namely,  that 
they  will  receive  more  attention,  and  become  the 
centre  of  solicitude  on  the  part  of  more  or  less 


PSYCHOTHERAPY  243 

numerous  relatives.  It  is  notorious,  too,  how  fre- 
quent are  the  minor  illnesses  of  persons  who  are 
prevented  by  those  illnesses  from  doing  the  very 
things,  such  as  keeping  a  social  appointment,  that 
they  truly  do  not  want  to  do.  Everyone  admits 
the  fact  of  the  disturbance  of  the  digestive  func- 
tions due  to  a  sudden  mental  shock,  such  as  sor- 
row, anger  or  fear.  It  is  quite  as  reasonable  that 
the  interaction  of  consciousness  and  the  vegetative 
processes  by  the  mediation  of  the  Unconscious 
may  also  be  traced,  with  the  result  that  we  may 
eventually  lay  some  of  our  physical  ills  definitely 
to  certain  modes  of  conscious  thinking.  To  certain 
modes  of  unconscious  thinking  they  have  already 
been  laid  by  the  Freudian  school.  Their  hypoth- 
esis is  that  hysterias  and  phobias,  with  their 
physical  manifestations,  are  attributable  to  a  con- 
flict between  the  Conscious  and  the  Unconscious, 
and  it  is  evident  now  just  what  that  conflict  con- 
sists in.  The  Unconscious  classifies  in  its  rough 
way  all  desires  of  its  own  as  legitimate,  in  so  far 
as  we  may  speak  of  legitimate  or  its  opposite  in 
connection  with  the  Unconscious,  while  the  more 
complicated  perception  of  the  conscious  mind 
classifies  some  of  these  desires  as  unlawful. 


244  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

C.  Psychic  Gravitation 

We  then  have  in  our  psyche  the  situation  already 
mentioned  from  Holt  as  typified  by  the  fact  that 
we  cannot  lie  in  bed  and  at  the  same  time  be  hurry- 
ing to  catch  a  train.  The  conscious  part  of  the 
mind,  which  is  so  many  ages  in  advance  of  the 
unconscious  in  all  the  refinements  of  modern 
social  organisation,  puts  restrictions  upon  the 
primal  desires  that  are  continually  pushing  up 
from  the  depths,  and  in  every  act  of  ours  that  is 
not  helpful  to  the  cause  of  social  evolution  we 
are  repeating  the  situation  which  is  symbolised  by 
the  conflict  between  lying  in  bed  and  hurrying  to 
catch  a  train.  Our  conscious  life,  a  type  of  activity, 
urges  us  to  get  up  and  go  about  our  business,  but 
the  archaic,  infantile  Unconscious  attempts  to 
drag  us  down  again  to  the  level  of  the  infant  in  the 
cradle.  It  is  so  much  easier  to  lie  in  bed.  The 
world  of  reality  outdoors  in  the  fields  and  in  the 
markets,  the  offices  and  the  shops,  contains  so 
much  that  requires  a  sacrifice  of  what  has  been  the 
primary  source  of  our  earliest  and  strongest  grati- 
fication, the  feeling  of  omnipotence  which  we  had 
as  infants  when  all  our  needs  were  supplied  with- 
out any  effort  on  our  part. 

It  is  necessary  to  emphasise  this  reluctance  of 
the  craving  for  life,  love  and  action  to  face  the 
outside  world,  for  it  is  shown  by  psychoanalytic 


PSYCHOTHERAPY  245 

research  that  it  is  so  strong  that  it  might  be  called 
the  psychic  law  of  gravitation.  The  craving  for 
action  is  not  excepted  in  this  general  statement, 
for  the  craving  for  action  is  not  primarily  a  crav- 
ing to  act  upon  the  world  but  upon  ourselves.  Our 
first  actions  have  ourselves  for  their  objects  and  a 
heightening  of  pleasure  for  their  result,  and  so  in- 
fantile is  the  Unconscious  that  even  in  people 
who  seem  to  get  satisfaction  from  a  work  that  ef- 
fects changes  upon  the  outside  world,  it  may  be 
shown  that  the  changes  made  upon  themselves  in 
the  way  of  increasing  their  capacity  for  pleasure 
are  really  sought  in  the  desire  for  big  broad 
physical  actions  much  more  than  any  effect  upon 
the  world  itself.  The  archaic  quality  of  the  un- 
conscious craving  does  not  in  every  case  require 
the  presence  of  a  physical  means  of  gratifica- 
tion so  archaic  that  it  is  impossible  of  attain- 
ment in  modern  society.  The  craving  for  big 
broad  modes  of  physical  action  can  be  sated  on 
the  farm,  in  the  mine,  on  the  sea  and  in  war. 
Hence  William  James'  suggestion  of  the  possi- 
bility of  a  moral  substitute  for  war.  In  most 
people,  too,  the  craving  for  activity  can  be  satis- 
fied by  substituting  mental  fatigue,  derived  from 
close  attention,  which  is  quite  analogous  to  physical 
endurance,  in  the  place  of  physical  fatigue,  which 
is  a  state  that  the  Titan  craves  for  the  privilege 
it  grants  him  to  return  to  the  slumbers  of  infancy. 


246   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

The  psychic  law  of  gravitation  is  the  ever- 
present  tendency  on  the  part  of  the  psyche  to  seek 
the  lowest  level  of  its  development  rather  than  to 
progress  in  an  upward  direction  as  viewed  from 
the  standpoint  of  social  organisation.  The  de- 
velopment of  the  individual  psyche  as  sketched 
in  a  previous  chapter  is,  when  successfully  car- 
ried out,  a  development  in  a  direction  the  reverse 
of  that  which  is  indicated  in  the  expression 
"  psychic  gravitation."  Successful  development  of 
the  psyche  is  toward  an  independent  and  self- 
sustaining  life  apart  from  the  source  in  which  the 
individual  had  its  origin.  Just  as  he  has,  in  order 
to  become  an  independent  individuality,  first  to  be 
weaned  from  the  breast,  and  subsequently  to  leave 
the  parental  influence,  if  not  the  parental  home, 
in  order  to  make  a  home  of  his  own,  so  his  psyche 
has  to  be  trained  away  from  its  inherent  infan- 
tility. But  the  psychic  gravitation  is  always  pull- 
ing him  down  toward  the  nerveless  protoplasm 
from  which  he  has  slowly  and  laboriously 
ascended. 

The  bearing  of  this  upon  the  cure  of  diseases 
may  not  be  so  clear  to  one  newly  introduced  to 
psychoanalysis;  but  it  becomes  clearer  when  it  is 
stated  that  the  analysis  of  all  nervous  diseases 
discovers  the  patient  arrested  at  some  stage  of  his 
upward  development  from  the  protoplasm,  which 
is  so  carefully  protected  by  nature  from  the  out- 


PSYCHOTHERAPY  247 

side  world.  And  a  great  many  conflicts  which  are 
discovered  by  psychoanalysis  to  be  the  causes  of 
so  many  ills,  both  physical  and  mental,  are  moral 
conflicts  between  the  duties  imposed  upon  the  indi- 
vidual by  his  environment  on  the  one  hand  and  the 
essential  infantility  of  his  desires  in  the  face  of 
those  duties  on  the  other.  As  the  growth  of  the 
individual  was  intended  by  nature  to  be  upward 
and  outward,  so  the  failure  of  the  individual  to 
respond  to  the  air  and  sunshine  of  his  environ- 
ment is  a  return  downward  and  inward.  The  un- 
successfully developing  human  psychical  organism 
regresses  toward  its  original  state  of  inactivity 
and  protectedness. 

One  of  the  commonest  forms  that  this  inactivity 
takes  is  day-dreaming.  This  is  almost  universal 
in  children.  By  means  of  it  they  get  ideally  the 
satisfactions  that  they  are  denied  really,  the  satis- 
factions which  are  called  for  by  the  craving  of 
their  existence.  The  power  of  the  imagination  is 
so  great  that  it  almost  replaces  in  satisfaction  value 
the  gratifications  that  rightly  should  come  only 
from  the  effects  produced  upon  the  outside  world. 
This  is  where  introversion  begins.  By  most  peo- 
ple it  is  not  given  up  until  they  have  met  some 
severe  rebuffs  from  the  world.  Some  people  never 
give  it  up,  and  remain  their  whole  life  long  at  this 
stage  of  infantility,  in  which  they  are  satisfied 
not  with  a  real  but  with  an  imaginary  fulfilment 


248   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

of  their  wishes.  When  it  is  realised  what  effect 
this  failure  to  objectify  their  wishes  may  have  on 
their  physical  systems,  due  to  the  minute  interplay 
between  physical  and  psychical,  it'will  not  be  sur- 
prising that  a  conflict  between  love  and  duty 
may  have  a  deleterious  effect  upon  the  health  both 
of  body  and  of  mind. 

So  we  return  again  to  the  position  from  which 
we  started — namely,  that  the  problem  of  the  em- 
ployment of  the  powers  with  which  we  are  en- 
dowed by  nature  is  a  moral  one,  set  by  the  finer 
discriminations  of  the  conscious  life,  and  if  we 
find  that  our  Unconscious  is  leading  us  to  take 
our  satisfactions  out  of  a  mode  of  activity  that  is 
not  in  our  case  the  most  productive  and  the  most 
adapted  to  further  the  progress  of  the  develop- 
ment of  human  society,  this  discrepancy  between 
the  moral  obligation  revealed  to  us  by  our  con- 
scious life  and  the  quality  of  our  performance,  as 
also  criticised  by  the  same  intelligence,  forms  the 
basis  of  a  conflict  in  which  the  physical  part  of 
our  ego  is  a  serious  loser. 

The  minuteness  and  the  universality  of  this  rela- 
tion between  the  two  aspects  of  our  ego,  the  mental 
and  the  physical,  is  what  renders  the  study  of 
psychoanalysis  so  difficult  and  so  complicated, 
but  the  researches  of  scientists  both  in  Europe 
and  in  this  country  are  making  rich  contribu- 
tions each  year  to  the  solution  of  this  problem, 


PSYCHOTHERAPY  249 

which  is  the  greatest  that  humanity  has  had  to 
face. 

We  have  thus  approached  the  question  of  the 
mental  causation  of  disease  from  two  directions. 
On  the  one  hand  we  have  seen  that  when  the  un- 
corrected  unconscious  mode  of  thinking,  which  we 
have  likened  to  a  reasoning  by  analogy,  has  been 
traced,  in  the  individual  under  analysis,  to  its  lair  in 
the  unconscious  part  of  the  ego,  and  has  been,  as  it 
were,  caught  and  brought  out  into  the  open  air  of 
consciousness,  the  falsity  of  the  implied  inference 
has  been  appreciated  by  the  Unconscious,  and  the 
physical  effects  of  this  intellectual  twist  have  been 
straightened  out,  by  the  Unconscious  itself.  It  is 
almost  as  if  the  Unconscious  were  an  awkward 
child  who  had  to  be  shown  how  to  do  certain 
things,  but  a  docile  child  who  after  being  shown 
was  willing  to  follow  directions  and  gain  the  re- 
ward that  was  held  out  to  it.  It  is  again  much  like 
a  hose  with  a  powerful  stream  of  water  flowing 
through  it,  which  needs  only  to  be  aimed  in  the 
direction  where  it  will  do  the  most  good.  This  is 
what  might  be  called  the  intellectual  side  of  the 
question.  Granted  that  after  these  thousands  of 
years  we  have  detected  the  Unconscious  in  a  mode 
of  mental  action  that  is  antiquated  and  of  no 
more  use  than  many  of  the  implements  of  the 
stone  age,  and  granted  that  while  we  use  the 
very  same  material  of  which  this  mode  of 


MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

thinking  is  made, — namely,  the  reasoning  by 
analogy, — in  our  everyday  life  at  the  present 
time,  but  with  the  corrections  and  directions 
with  which  conscious  formal  reasoning  has  im- 
proved it,  we  still  find  that  there  is  another  side 
of  it  which  we  have  not  considered.  This  is  the 
moral  phase  of  the  question.  And  the  moral 
phase  shows  that  in  order  to  make  the  most  of 
our  mental  and  physical  opportunities,  we  are 
obliged  to  recognise  the  existence  of,  and  to  sacri- 
fice, the  infantility  which  we  see  standing  in  the 
way  of  our  best  development  in  the  direction  of 
social  human  adult  activity. 

So  that  on  the  other  hand  we  have  approached 
the  question  of  the  mental  causation  of  disease 
from  the  point  of  view  afforded  us  by  the  deeper 
insight  into  the  nature  and  individual  development 
of  the  psyche.  The  evolution  of  social  life  de- 
mands from  each  one  of  us  a  standard  of  be- 
haviour toward  our  environment  which  may 
be  expressed  in  the  words  adult  and  human. 
Psychoanalysis  has  found  that  wherever  we  have 
been  subject  to  a  certain  class  of  diseases,  we  have 
failed  to  come  up  to  this  standard,  and  indeed 
without  knowing  it  ourselves.  In  every  act  of  our 
lives  we  are  confronted  with  a  moral  problem, 
which  may  be  expressed  in  the  question  as  to 
whether  we  have  acted  our  part  in  the  world  as 
men  and  women  in  every  particular.  It  may  be 


PSYCHOTHERAPY  25 1; 

objected  here  that  there  are  plenty  of  people  in 
the  world  who  when  viewed  from  this  standard 
are  childish  enough  in  their  actions,  and  yet  are 
perfectly  healthy.  It  is  almost  certain,  however, 
that  such  people  have  not  lived  out  their  full  lives, 
and  that  sooner  or  later  they  will  inevitably  pay 
in  one  way  or  another  for  their  ignorance.  Up  to 
a  certain  point  ignorance  is  bliss,  but  beyond  that 
point  it  is  not  only  misery  but  is  very  like  de- 
pravity. 

If  all  the  results  of  psychoanalytic  research  so 
far  attained  have  shown  that  in  every  case  of  a 
large  and  continually  increasing  number  of  dis- 
eases there  is  a  moral  factor  which  is  very  potent 
in  the  causation  of  the  disease,  and  if  that  moral 
factor  is  summed  up  in  the  words  "  adult  attitude 
toward  the  world,"  it  is  very  certain  that  it  is  the 
duty  of  everyone  to  whom  the  information  comes 
concerning  the  later  findings  in  the  study  of  the 
human  soul  to  take  what  steps  he  can  to  find  out 
just  how  he  measures  up  according  to  this  new 
standard,  information  which,  however,  can  be  ex- 
actly and  fully  ascertained  only  through  the  study 
of  psychoanalysis.  But  as  this  study  is  at  present 
the  pursuit  of  comparatively  few  persons,  it  will 
for  some  time  to  come  be  impracticable  for  any 
except  those  needing  such  study  of  themselves  on 
account  of  serious  impediments  of  the  mental  and 
moral  nature,  which  have  gone  so  far  as  to  make 


252  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

them  incapable  of  doing  their  proper  work  in  the 
social  organisation. 

I  have  said  that  psychoanalysis  made  inferences 
concerning  the  Unconscious  similar  to  the  infer- 
ence made  by  astronomy  about  the  existence  of 
the  planet  Neptune  before  the  time  of  telescopes 
strong  enough  to  make  the  planet  visible.  The 
simile,  if  carried  further,  would  imply  that  a  more 
amplified  vision  would  be  attained  by  which  the 
unconscious  mental  processes  inferred  by  psycho- 
analysis would  later  be  made  perceptible  to  con- 
sciousness, just  as  our  modern  high-powered  tele- 
scopes give  us  a  view  of  Neptune  itself.  But  the 
fact  is  that  psychoanalysis  is  itself  that  high- 
powered  instrument,  and  that  the  unconscious 
mental  processes,  thoughts,  wishes  and  feelings 
are  continually  being  brought  into  conscious  per- 
ception by  means  of  this  branch  of  analytic  psy- 
chology. This  is  a  part  of  the  therapeutic  pro- 
cedure. For  example,  the  unconscious  wish  for 
the  death  of  a  beloved  relative  when  brought  into 
consciousness  works  off  in  the  emotions  we  then 
experience.  Because  of  this  working  off  of  the 
emotions,  which  were  in  a  certain  sense  causing  a 
sort  of  psychic  colic  below  the  level  of  conscious- 
ness, the  energy  connected  with  these  emotions  is 
vented  on  the  outside  world,  to  the  great  advan- 
tage of  the  mental-bodily  system.  By  the  psycho- 
analysts this  working  off  is  called  abreaction.  It 


PSYCHOTHERAPY  253 

might  be  characterised  as  the  bringing  of  uncon- 
scious mental  material  into  the  orderly  percep- 
tions of  conscious  life,  and  rearranging  them 
according  to  the  philosophy  of  life  of  the  indi- 
vidual. This  will  imply  either  that  the  individual 
has  a  reasoned  life  philosophy  or  that  in  the 
process  of  being  analysed  he  is  acquiring  one. 

We  see,  then,  that  psychoanalysis  educates  the 
psyche  with  the  direct  object  of  enabling  it  to  co- 
operate with  the  vegetative  functions  of  the  body 
for  the  purpose  of  curing  disease.  Psychotherapy 
in  this  sense  is  not  merely  a  mind  cure  or  a  form 
of  Christian  Science.  It  does  not  proceed  by  mere 
affirmation  of  health  or  negation  of  disease. 
What  we  have  pointed  out  with  regard  to  nega- 
tivism (p.  60)  shows  that  devoting  so  much 
attention  to  disease  as  to  encircle  it  with  compre- 
hensive negation  is  as  rational  as  saying  that  the 
circumference  of  a  circle  has  nothing  to  do  with 
its  centre  because  it  nowhere  touches  the  centre. 
The  Christian  Scientists  have  mentally  kept  a  con- 
stant distance  between  themselves  and  disease. 
They  have  walked  around  just  one  point  to  which 
they  are  psychologically  tied,  viz. :  the  fear  of  dis- 
ease. In  both  schools  of  "  mental  healing," — the 
positive  one  which  advocates  health  in  general 
terms,  and  the  negative  one,  which  disclaims  dis- 
ease,— the  morbid  condition  occupies  the  centre  of 
attention  and  fills  the  minds  of  the  adherents  of 


254  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

either  school  with  the  one  concept.  Christian  Sci- 
ence in  so  fervently  denying  the  existence  of  disease 
is  really  emphasising  the  fear  of  it.  Psycho- 
analytic therapeutics,  far  from  being  the  mere 
verbal  affirmation  or  negation  of  a  concept,  has 
supplied  us  with  an  elaborate  theory  of  the  modes 
by  which  ideas  are  converted  into  diseases. 

One  of  the  simplest  expressions  of  this  theory 
is  the  statement  that  the  unconscious  phantasy  ac- 
quires the  greatest  independence  of  vitality  when 
split  off  from  the  rest  of  the  psyche,  in  the  case  of 
people  who  are  not  doing  enough  of  the  proper 
kind  of  directed  thinking.  Directed  thinking  of 
the  right  kind  is  that  which  is  connected  with 
and  informed  by  the  experience  of  other  people, 
and  the  patients  in  these  cases  are  generally  those 
who  have  formed  phantasies  of  their  own  about 
the  different  physiological  functions. 

"  The  content  of  the  phantasy  may  be  a  theory 
that  is  possessed  by  an  affect.  A  girl  sixteen 
years  old  suffered  regularly  at  her  menstrual 
period  from  vomiting.  It  was  found  that  when 
a  child  she  had  believed  that  children  were  born 
through  the  mouth.  After  enlightenment  in  this 
particular  the  symptom  immediately  ceased " 
(Pfister). 

In  this  girl  the  symbol,  as  we  have  seen  in 
Chapter  V,  D,  is  an  idea  having  an  energic  value 
consistent  with  the  analogic  reasoning  of  the  Un- 


PSYCHOTHERAPY  255 

conscious  Titan,  and  has  produced  an  effect  which 
was  inevitable  whether  the  theory  was  a  good  one 
or  a  bad  one.  When  it  was  shown  to  her  that  the 
theory  was  contrary  to  that  of  all  the  rest  of 
humanity  she  again  acted  as  if  the  new  explanation 
were  true,  as  indeed  this  time  it  was. 

Bertschinger  tells  (Psychoanalytic  Review,  III, 
p.  176)  of  several  cases  of  paranoia  where  ex- 
planations resulted  in  a  new  point  of  view  and  a 
satisfactory  cure.  A  "  paranoid  with  vivid  hal- 
lucinations of  hearing  and  delusions  of  persecu- 
tion on  the  part  of  certain  persons  who  was  greatly 
excited  and  partly  confused,  declared  when  he 
began  to  quiet  down  that  the  abusive  expressions 
and  remarks  of  his  persecutors  were  probably 
quite  harmlessly  intended.  He  believed,  however, 
for  a  long  time  that  a  Higher  Power  had  deliv- 
ered him  over  to  them  so  that  he  might  guess  their 
secret  meaning.  Then  he  explained  his  voices, 
which  he  divided  into  '  higher  voices  and  lower 
voices '  as  '  combinations  of  thoughts,'  still  later 
as  his  '  own  inner  reflections.'  Soon  after  this  he 
was  discharged  as  cured.  .  .  . 

"  In  two  cases  improvement  and  cure  set  in 
immediately  upon  the  uncovering  by  myself  of 
severe,  comparatively  recent  complexes  and  upon 
psychological  attempts  at  explanation.  .  .  . 

'  The  second  case  was  that  of  a  typographer, 
thirty-five  years  old,  whose  trouble  began  sub- 


256  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT, 

acutely  in  1900.  He  was  then  at  a  printing  estab- 
lishment in  French  Switzerland.  He  believed 
himself  secretly  watched,  heard  everywhere 
1  Dutchman  '  or  '  dirty  Dutchman  '  called  after 
him,  finally  came  to  believe  that  a  special  associa- 
tion had  been  formed  for  the  purpose  of  persecut- 
ing him.  Very  secretly  he  fled  to  Paris,  as  he 
assumed  that  it  would  be  impossible  to  notify  all 
the  people  of  so  large  a  city  of  his  coming.  But 
even  at  the  station  everyone  called  *  Dutchman.' 
Despairingly  he  turned  and  without  stopping  fled 

to  his  brother's  house  near  Sch ,  went  to  bed, 

would  neither  eat,  speak  nor  move,  and  was 
brought,  on  October  9,  1906,  to  the  asylum,  mute 
and  negativistic.  On  October  12,  after  long  exer- 
tion, I  was  able  to  get  him  to  speak.  He  related 
to  me  an  old  fatal  love  story,  and  soon  another 
sexual  complex  was  also  detected.  Still  somewhat 
distrustful  he  received  my  explanation  of  the 
genesis  of  his  hallucinations,  then  carried  on  a 
long  conversation  with  an  old  paranoid  who  had 
numerous  hallucinations  and  soon  surprised  me  by 
the  communication  that  through  the  study  of  this 
other  patient  he  had  convinced  himself  of  the 
origin  of  hallucinations  of  hearing  and  would 
hence  be  free  from  them  himself.  On  October 
21  he  sought  permission  to  go  out,  as  he  wanted 
to  test  if  he  had  ceased  to  hear  voices  even  in  the 
town.  He  came  back  beaming  with  joy,  was  dis- 


PSYCHOTHERAPY  257 

charged  as  cured  on  October  22,  after  only  four- 
teen days'  stay  in  the  asylum,  and  has  remained 
well  until  the  present  day." 

Resymbolisation  is  thus  seen  to  be  one  of  the 
bases  of  psychoanalytic  therapy.  It  is  a  natural 
sequel  of  the  theory  that  a  symptom  of  a  disease 
is  the  symbol  of  an  unconscious  wish.  Without  in- 
quiring how  the  symbols  themselves  in  Bert- 
schinger's  cases  were  converted  from  unconscious 
wishes  into  the  hallucination  of  voices,  we  see  that 
the  cure  of  these  cases  was  mediated  by  an  ex- 
planation in  which  the  occurrence  of  the  voices  was 
seen  in  a  different  light.  The  asocial  nature  of  the 
voices  was  revealed  and  the  correlation  was  made 
between  the  patient  and  society,  with  which  for 
a  time  he  was  at  odds.  The  phenomena  were  re- 
classified,  resymbolised.  In  the  morbid  state  the 
voices  symbolised  the  hostility  of  society  to  the 
patients,  and  progress  to  the  healthy  condition  was 
mediated  if  not  entirely  caused  by  the  reinterpre- 
tation  of  these  symbols,  making  them  symbols  of 
another  thing,  viz. :  a  purely  mental  product.  It  is 
as  if  the  patients  reasoned  that  those  voices  were 
not  really  the  voices  of  hostile  members  of  society, 
but  merely  the  fabrications  of  the  imagination. 
As  such,  of  course,  they  would  not  have  the  pain- 
ful result  that  they  might  have  had  if  they  were 
really  the  threats  of  his  fellow-men  which  might 
indeed  be  carried  out.  Similarly  the  girl  who 


258   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

*  J 

vomited  at  her  periods  resymbolised  her  disorder 
after  being  informed  that  parturition  was  not  oral, 
and  the  girl  who  had  swollen  lips  was  made  to 
understand  that  the  swelling  symbolised  an  uncon- 
conscious  wish  of  her  psyche. 

Bertschinger  gives  also  other  cases  where  pa- 
tients who  believed  they  were  pregnant  were  re- 
lieved of  their  hallucination  by  the  removal  of  a 
tooth.  They  resymbolised  in  a  slightly  different 
way,  seeking  the  removal  of  the  tooth  as  if  it  were 
the  delivery  of  a  child,  and  departed  cured.  An- 
other woman  was  cured  of  a  melancholia  after 
she  had  burned  her  "  certificate  of  origin."  In  so 
doing  she  seems  to  have  symbolised  a  change,  giv- 
ing up  one  personality  together  with  all  the  mental 
affliction  connected  with  it. 

Mention  has  been  made  in  an  earlier  chapter 
of  the  feeling  of  inferiority.  One  of  the  German 
psychoanalysts,  A.  Adler,  has  a  theory  that  the 
unconsciously  perceived  inferiority  of  any  organ 
— for  instance,  the  eye — results  in  an  equally  un- 
conscious tendency  to  stimulate  and  thus  develop 
that  organ.  Thus,  some  artists  have  uncon- 
sciously chosen  their  careers  because  of  a  com- 
parative inferiority  of  their  visual  apparatus, 
causing  a  greater  activity  in  visual  mentality,  and 
a  corresponding  overestimation  of  the  value  of 
visual  sensations.  Similarly  the  comparative  in- 
feriority of  the  sense  of  hearing  turns  some 


PSYCHOTHERAPY  259 

people  unconsciously  toward  musical  performance, 
whether  playing  or  composing.  We  see  this  in 
the  tendency  of  some  men  of  small  stature  to  de- 
vote much  attention  to  physical  training,  and  in 
general  a  leaning  of  most  people  to  develop  the 
weaker  side  of  their  character.  Bombastic  patri- 
otism is  thus  rightly  regarded  with  suspicion. 
No  physically  enormous  man  needs  to  be  espe- 
cially pugnacious,  for  he  unconsciously  feels  that 
he  will  not  be  often  attacked.  Demosthenes  may 
have  become  an  orator  because  he  was  originally 
a  stammerer.  Physicians  have  studied  medicine 
to  compensate  for  a  sickly  childhood,  just  as 
men  have  made  fortunes  in  money  to  remove 
themselves  as  far  as  possible  from  the  penury  of 
their  youthful  days. 

It  is  quite  reasonable,  too,  to  suppose  that  many 
diseases  are  compensations  for  certain  circum- 
stances of  the  environment  of  the  sufferers.  Na- 
poleon, whose  ambition  might  justify  one  in 
calling  him  the  personification  of  assimilative 
appetite,  dies  of  cancer  of  the  stomach,  a  child- 
less married  woman  dies  of  cancer  of  the  breast, 
some  men  drink  life  to  the  lees  and  perish  pre- 
maturely of  uraemic  poisoning. 


26o  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

D.   The  Transference 

In  the  chapter  on  dreams  mention  was  made 
incidentally  of  the  change  of  heart  occurring  neces- 
sarily in  persons  who  have  their  dreams  analysed 
scientifically.  They  begin  by  being  sceptical  as  to 
the  value  of  dreams.  In  attempting  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  analyser  to  utter  thoughts  occurring 
in  connection  with  their  dreams  they  meet  with 
frequent  stoppages  in  their  thoughts.  It  seems 
to  them  that  the  ideas  unexpectedly  occurring  dur- 
ing the  hours  with  the  analyst  are  unconnected 
with  the  main  topic  of  the  dream,  or  are  of  too 
personal  and  private  a  nature  to  communicate. 
But  if  the  analysand  finally  succeeds  in  abandon- 
ing the  restraint  which  he  feels  and  utters  uncon- 
ditionally all  the  fancies  supplied  by  his  Uncon- 
scious, no  matter  how  trivial  and  irrelevant  these 
ideas  seem,  it  is  by  virtue  of  a  transference  of 
his  confidence  from  himself  or  from  some  other 
person  to  the  analyser.  This  transference  does 
not  always  occur  all  at  once,  but  may  alternate 
with  resistances  which  are  shown  in  multitudinous 
ways.  One  of  these  is  the  appearance  of  new 
disease  symptoms.  A  woman  compulsion-neurosis 
patient  of  one  of  the  European  psychoanalysts 
manifests  her  transference  to  the  physician  by  a 
direct  avowal  of  love  for  him.  To  his  explana- 
tion that  this  affection  was  perfectly  natural  and 


PSYCHOTHERAPY  261 

merely  showed  a  recrudescence,  with  him  as  an 
object,  of  an  infantile-erotic  phantasy,  her  reaction 
was  a  sudden  sensation  on  her  tongue  as  if  she 
had  burned  it.  To  this  he  replied  that  the 
"  burnt "  tongue  only  symbolised  her  disappoint- 
ment in  not  having  her  affection  returned  by  him 
in  the  same  degree,  an  explanation  which  she  did 
not  at  first  accept.  When,  however,  the  burnt 
tongue  sensation  vanished  upon  this  explanation, 
she  admitted  that  his  view  of  the  case  had  been 
correct. 

We  may  suppose  here  that  the  new  symptom 
has  been  produced  by  the  Unconscious,  here  act- 
ing as  a  sort  of  advocatus  diaboli,  for  the  purpose 
of  having  it  removed  by  the  physician,  in  which 
view  it  appears  as  a  new  proof  of  transference, — 
that  is,  a  display  of  confidence  in  the  ability  of  the 
physician  to  set  things  right  by  his  new  way  of 
looking  at  them  (reclassification,  resymbolising). 
There  is  a  transference  here  in  a  double  sense. 
The  malady  of  the  patient  is  transferred  or  trans- 
muted for  the  time  being  into  another  one  having 
a  different  symptom,  and  the  fact  that  it  promptly 
vanishes  is  to  be  regarded  as  analogous  with  the 
possibility  that  the  other  symptoms  will  similarly 
disappear. 

The  fundamental  facts  of  the  transference,  how- 
ever, are  that  consciousness  tends,  particularly 
that  dominated  by  the  Unconscious  which  has 


262  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

remained  at  the  pleasure-pain  level,  immediately 
to  seek  for  a  remedy  for  any  physical  ailment.  In 
this  respect  the  transference  of  the  craving  to  the 
person  of  the  analyser  is  similar  to  the  original 
feeling  which  the  individual  as  a  child  had  for 
the  father,  so  that  the  frequent  recourse  to  doc- 
tors, clergymen,  lawyers  and  other  advisers,  like 
appeals  to  persons  for  any  kind  of  help  in  any 
difficulty  whatever,  are  an  expression  of  the  father- 
imago  mentioned  in  Chapter  VII. 

It  is  needless  to  say  that,  as  the  main  object  of 
psychoanalytic  therapeutics  is  to  remove  the  pa- 
tient from  the  infantile  level  of  the  pain-pleasure 
principle  to  the  adult  level  of  the  reality  prin- 
ciple, the  accomplishment  of  this  aim,  if  attained, 
will  result  in  at  least  a  diminution  of  the  degree  of 
this  transference.  The  craving  of  the  patient  for 
the  sympathy  of  the  physician,  which  is  an  infantile 
one,  and  therefore  introversional  in  its  character, 
has  to  be  turned  outward  upon  the  world  of  real- 
ity. In  plain  words,  the  patient  has  to  find  some- 
thing real  to  do  in  order  to  satisfy  the  craving 
for  production,  which,  if  completely  introverted, 
has  the  effect  of  destroying  the  owner  and  ignorant 
misuser  of  it. 

The  phenomena  of  transference  are  not  peculiar 
to  psychoanalysis.  They  account  for  the  doctor's 
being  called  in  on  many  unnecessary  occasions,  and 
for  the  fact  that  half  the  average  general  practi- 


PSYCHOTHERAPY  263 

tioner's  cases  are  trivial  ills  in  which  the  vis 
medicatrix  naturae  would  be  quite  as  efficacious  as 
the  physician's  doses,  though  probably  not  quite 
so  good  as  in  combination  with  his  reassuring 
words  and  presence. 

Occasionally,  too,  the  physician,  having  read 
a  bit  of  psychoanalysis,  attempts  to  go  into  the 
study  of  the  Unconscious  of  the  patient,  and  the 
result  is  a  romance  or  a  near-tragedy.  One  such 
physician  in  a  large  Eastern  city,  after  a  detailed 
study  of  the  unconscious  cravings  of  one  of  his 
woman  patients,  found  himself  faced  with  a  posi- 
tive transference  on  her  part  of  so  strenuous  a 
nature  that  he  was  forced  to  drop  the  case  entirely 
and  hand  it  over  to  an  experienced  psychoanalyst. 

While  the  phenomena  of  transference  are  not 
peculiar  to  psychoanalysis,  it  is  quite  certain  that 
the  psychoanalytic  investigation  of  it  is  the  deep- 
est that  has  yet  been  made  and  that  the  numerous 
problems  connected  with  it,  and  indeed  with  the 
relation  of  doctor,  minister  and  teacher  to  their 
proteges,  chiefly  but  not  solely  of  the  opposite  sex, 
have  come  nearer  to  a  solution  by  this  means  than 
by  any  other. 

"  In  this  connection  it  should  be  remembered 
finally  that  normal  individuals,  too,  very  fre- 
quently show  a  slight  physical  manifestation  [of 
the  repressed  archaic  wish].  A  pain  in  the  head 
or  stomach,  a  slight  intestinal  catarrh,  a  mild  in- 


264  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

somnia  and  similar  trivial  ills  are  many  times  of 
psychogenic  nature  (mental  origin)  and  belong  to 
the  experiences  of  everyday  life,  which  are  gotten 
rid  of  by  a  little  occasional  analysis  (often 
through  self-analysis).  Who  is  there  who  is  not 
the  least  bit  nervous?  The  famous  neurologist 
Mobius  stated  in  all  seriousness  that  every  human 
had  hysterical  symptoms.  No  one  has  denied  it  " 
(Pfister  I.e.,  p.  1 60). 


CHAPTER  XII 

EDUCATIONAL  APPLICATIONS 

THINKING  that  is  directed  only  according  to  the 
plans  of  the  modern  systems  of  education  fails, 
through  its  not  taking  into  account  the  results  of 
the  symbolisation  that  the  Unconscious  is  continu- 
ally forming  so  as  to  push  up  from  the  depths 
below  the  expression  of  its  craving. 

We  have  shown  by  means  of  illustrations  how 
some  of  the  most  commonplace  actions  of  every- 
day life  are  the  symbolic  expressions  of  primal 
cravings  misunderstood  and  misapplied  by  the 
conscious  life.  In  the  actual  training  given  by 
teachers  in  schoolrooms  very  little  if  any  of 
this  symbolism  is  recognised  and  the  pupils  are 
wrenched  to  fit  a  Procrustean  bed  instead  of  hav- 
ing their  personalities  developed  according  to  the 
characteristics  with  which  nature  endowed  them. 
If  figs  are  not  gathered  of  thorns,  it  is  impossible 
to  expect  a  certain  kind  of  result  from  the  classical 
type  of  training.  But  every  child  has  a  feeling  of 
inferiority  before  any  educational  task,  whether  it 
be  arithmetic  or  history  or  Latin,  and  the  sense 
of  mastery,  which  is  especially  strong  in  boys, 

265 


266   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

should  be  employed  by  the  teacher  in  all  school 
work,  for  we  now  know  that  it  is  as  inevitable 
as  sunshine,  and  that  the  young  person  is  bound  to 
get  it  out  of  some  source,  even  out  of  his  own 
body,  or  abuse  of  his  own  mind.  If  the  example  in 
arithmetic  is  not  solved,  the  pupil  is  much  more 
likely  to  take  his  gratification  from  the  dream-life 
of  the  moving-picture  shows,  where  anything  that 
human  desire  can  conceive  is  represented  as  a 
visual  reality,  but  it  is  equally  true  that  so  great 
a  gratification  may  be  derived  from  the  successful 
performance  of  a  school  task  that  it  will  com- 
pletely satisfy  the  craving  of  the  individual,  in  fact 
produce  a  craving  for  more  satisfaction  of  the 
same  nature.  That  is  what  we  call  getting  thor- 
oughly interested  in  arithmetic  or  in  history  or  in 
any  branch  of  school  work. 

A.   The  Object  of  Mental  Activity 

The  aim  of  all  psychic  life  is  to  produce  an 
effect  upon  that  which  is  not  psychic.  Otherwise 
it  would  have  no  reason  for  its  existence.  The 
aim  of  all  mental  activity  is  to  change  material 
states.  This  effect  alone  is  the  justification  for  any 
mental  life  in  the  universe,  just  as  we  have  seen 
in  the  chapter  on  Therapy  that  the  time  in  evolu- 
tion at  which  consciousness  entered  was  the  exact 
moment  that  some  physical  difficulty  was  en- 


EDUCATIONAL  APPLICATIONS  267 

countered.  Perfect  mechanical  smoothness  of 
running  needs  no  conscious  direction  by  any  mental 
factor,  nor  any  adaptation  nor  readjustment.  So 
that  the  only  reason  for  there  being  in  our  world 
any  forms  of  mental  life  higher  than  mere  sensa- 
tion is  that  there  is  a  change  to  be  wrought  in 
the  material  world  outside  of  us.  This  is  ex- 
pressed in  other  words  by  saying  that  the  energy 
developed  by  the  impingement  of  any  force  on  our 
sensory  system  would  again  go  right  out  from,  or 
be  immediately  reflected  by,  the  brain,  if  reflex 
action  is  to  be  regarded  as  mental  action,  or  if 
reflex  action  were  the  only  form  of  mental  action. 
But  the  amount  of  energy  admitted  from  the  out- 
side world  through  the  gates  of  the  senses,  does 
not  all  issue  immediately  as  reflex  action.  Some 
of  this  energy  remains  locked  up  in  the  higher 
brain  centres  and  at  any  appropriate  time  may  be 
let  loose  by  purely  mental  causes, — that  is,  inde- 
pendently of  whether  there  is  energy  entering  at 
the  same  time  through  the  gates  of  the  senses  or 
not.  So  it  is  evident  that  there  has  been  here  a 
transformation  or  conversion  of  physical,  material 
energy  into  a  form  of  energy  which  we  shall  call 
psychical  energy,  and  that  psychical  energy  is 
totally  different  from  physical  energy  in  appear- 
ance. That  is,  it  may,  like  potential  energy  in 
matter,  lie  dormant  for  a  long  time,  or  appear  to 
do  so,  and  all  of  a  sudden  be  changed  into  physical 


268    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

energy  just  as  from  static  electricity  to  dynamic  in 
a  flash  of  lightning,  without  that  change  being 
effected  by  any  physical  cause.  Thus  we  have  a 
stream  of  energy  flowing  in  from  the  outer  world 
to  the  psyche  and  either  issuing  at  once  from  the 
psyche  toward  the  world  again,  or  stored  in 
the  psyche  either  for  use  at  another  time  or  for  the 
purpose  of  accumulation.  The  ingoing  stream  is 
compensated  for  or  balanced  by  an  outgoing 
stream.  The  balance  is  rarely  even.  It  is  evi- 
dent that  a  current  if  flowing  only  in  one  direction 
would  be  an  utter  absurdity,  and  this  proves  that 
the  only  object  of  the  stream  of  energy  entering 
the  psyche  from  the  outside  world  is  that  it  may 
again  be  transformed  by  the  activities  of  the 
psyche,  in  moulding  the  energy  and  reshaping  it 
according  to  a  mental  or  psychical  or  spiritual  or 
cosmical  plan.  This  plan  is  one  which  originates 
in  the  psychical  realm  and  is  imposed  upon  the 
material  world.  But  to  go  into  the  question 
either  of  proving  this  or  of  showing  in  what  way 
the  transition  between  the  purely  psychical  and  the 
physical  is  effected  would  take  us  far  out  of  our 
way  and  into  metaphysical  spheres  which  are  less 
interesting  and  profitable.  The  facts  to  be  clearly 
understood  are  that  there  is  a  stream  of  energy 
going  in  both  directions,  to  and  from  the  psyche, 
and  that  the  one  going  from  the  psyche  is  subject 
to  great  variations. 


EDUCATIONAL  APPLICATIONS  269 

Now,  it  is  of  greatest  importance  in  our  present 
consideration  to  keep  clearly  before  us  the  fact 
that  the  object  of  education  is  to  produce  an  effect, 
and  to  train  our  children  to  produce  an  effect,  not 
on  themselves  but  on  the  outer  world,  not  a  plan- 
less effect  which  "  marks  the  earth  with  ruin,"  but 
an  effect  which  shall  be  in  agreement  with  the 
plan  above  mentioned.  This  plan,  though  it 
originates  in  the  psychical  realm,  does  not  come 
from  one  man's  mind  completely  formed,  like 
Minerva  from  the  head  of  Jupiter,  but  from  the 
minds  of  many  men,  all  of  them  constituting  a 
social  unit  and  working  together  for  the  accom- 
plishment of  a  certain  definite  though  unconscious 
purpose. 

A  very  insidious  fallacy  in  educational  theory 
and  a  deplorable  defect  in  educational  practice 
is  caused  by  a  failure  to  realise  exactly  this  point. 
From  some  of  the  implications  of  the  principle 
that  what  must  be  done  in  education  is  to  develop 
the  child's  mind  and  body  separately  (mens  sana 
in  corpore  sano)  as  if  they  could  be  separately 
developed  and  that  mens  could  be  put  into  the 
body  when  it  got  sana  enough  or  could  be  taken 
out  of  the  body  for  sanitation  and  returned  to  the 
body  at  the  end  of  the  school  day.  But  it  should 
be  carefully  borne  in  mind  that  what  we  are  edu- 
cating for  is  to  develop  in  the  child  an  ability  to 
effect,  according  to  a  plan,  changes  upon  the  world 


270   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

of  reality  outside  of  him,  and  not  to  make  any 
change  in  himself  the  primary  aim.  The  only 
thing  that  is  going  to  make  Johnny  a  good  boy  or 
a  different  boy  is  the  changes  which  Johnny  has, 
according  to  a  plan,  created  in  his  own  surround- 
ings. 

This  definitely  cuts  out  all  phantasying,  for 
while  phantasying  is  a  form  of  psychic  activity, 
it  has  for  its  object  the  psyche  itself  on  which  all 
its  effects  are  produced.  It  may  be  remarked  here 
that  there  is  a  kind  of  mental  activity  which  is  pro- 
ductive in  that  it  causes  an  effect  on  reality, — 
postponed,  to  be  sure,  or  transposed,  as  when  a 
novelist  writes  his  story  for  the  subsequent  amuse- 
ment of  mankind,  or  when  an  accountant  is  audit- 
ing the  books  of  a  big  business  house ;  and  it  may 
be  said  that  in  teaching  English  as  it  is  taught 
today  in  the  schools  we  are,  if  not  making  him 
productive  at  the  present  time,  preparing  him  to 
be  productive  at  a  future  time.  So  we  teach  him 
Latin,  both  with  the  purpose  of  subjecting  his 
unconscious  cravings  to  direction  and  to  furnish 
his  mind  with  material  which  he  will  use  at  a 
later  time.  The  same  remark  applies  to  mathe- 
matics above  the  simple  operations  of  arithmetic. 
The  question  of  the  formative  value  is  one  much 
discussed,  and  that  of  the  mental  furniture  is  not 
yet  satisfactorily  solved;  for  the  postponement 
of  the  time  when  the  individual  shall  be  pro- 


ductive  is  to  a  later  and  later  date  as  the  years 
go  on. 

Mention  has  already  been  made  of  the  book  Die 
Psychanalytische  Methode  by  Oscar  Pfister,* 
which  is  devoted  to  the  application  of  the  psycho- 
analytic procedure  to  the  problems  of  education. 
There  is  no  other  book  dealing  directly  with  this 
subject  in  English.  It  is  also  quite  out  of  the 
question  to  give  anything  like  a  thorough  treat- 
ment of  even  a  single  phase  of  the  subject  in  a 
chapter  in  a  general  review  of  so  large  a  topic 
as  I  have  attempted  to  deal  with  in  the  present 
volume. 

There  are,  however,  a  number  of  general  con- 
siderations which  no  one  having  anything  to  do 
with  education  can  afford  to  ignore.  The  first  and 
most  important  fact  that  should  be  recognised  by 
teachers  and  others  interested  in  education  is  the 
unconscious  resistance  on  the  part  of  the  pupil  to 
everything  that  the  teacher  represents.  This  re- 
sistance may  be  coexistent  with  the  most  polite 
acquiescence,  the  result  of  a  strong  home  training, 
and  with  the  most  excellent  ability, — both  of 
which,  to  be  sure,  make  the  friction  between  pupil 
and  teacher  less, — but  both  of  these  qualities  are 
quite  independent  of  the  natural  unconscious  re- 
sistance to  the  authority  of  the  teacher.  The 
necessity  for  the  outward  show  of  authority  is  of 

*  Leipzig  and  Berlin,  1913,  viii  +  5*2  PP-  Trans,  by  Payne,  1917. 


272   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

course  greater  in  schools  where  the  classes  are 
large,  and  where  for  that  reason  there  seems  to  be 
less  opportunity  for  elasticity,  and  where  the 
authority  of  the  teacher  is  correspondingly  exag- 
gerated. In  smaller  schools  where  more  of  the 
teacher's  attention  is  secured  for  each  pupil,  there 
is  still  found  a  great  proportion  of  the  authority 
element  in  spite  of  the  possibly  stronger  feeling 
of  camaraderie  between  teachers  and  pupils.  In- 
deed, it  is  one  of  the  compensations  of  the  ambiva- 
lence of  the  educational  situation  that  some 
smaller  schools,  in  order  to  defend  themselves 
against  a  supposed  laxity  in  the  performance  of 
their  functions,  stiffen  their  curriculum  and  in- 
crease their  paternalistic  authority  for  the  purpose 
of  raising  their  standard  of  scholarship. 

Now,  this  paternalistic  trend  of  education 
necessarily  proceeds  from  the  view  of  education 
as  a  transmitting  of  the  experience  of  the  race  to 
the  individual.  It  is  implied  that  the  teacher  has 
a  better  and  wider  experience  than  the  pupil  and 
that  his  object  is  to  make  the  pupil  see  that  it  will 
be  better  for  him  to  avail  himself  of  this  accumu- 
lated knowledge,  for  the  uplift  of  the  race. 
Right  here  the  teacher  is  faced  with  the  uncon- 
scious resistance  of  the  pupil  in  the  fact  that  the 
pupil's  Unconscious,  seeking  always  for  a  means 
of  increasing  his  sense  of  superiority,  so  as  to 
remove  the  painful  feeling  of  inferiority  which  is 


EDUCATIONAL  APPLICATIONS  273 

the  cause  of  all  fables,  is  sure  that  at  bottom  it 
knows  better  than  the  teacher,  better  than  the 
father,  better  in  fact  than  all  the  world,  when  it 
sets  itself  up  as  an  authority.  The  school,  the 
teachers  and  the  work  are  to  the  Unconscious  of 
the  child  of  any  age  barriers  set  up  between  it 
and  the  following  of  its  own  bent,  which  as  we 
have  seen  is  for  phantastic  as  opposed  to  directed 
thinking. 

B.   The  Father-Image 

The  school  has  for  a  long  time  been  looked  at 
as  in  loco  parentis,  or  as  taking,  for  the  time  dur- 
ing which  the  child  is  in  school,  the  place  of  the 
parent.  As  the  vast  majority  of  teachers  in  this 
country  are  women,  it  might  be  supposed  that  the 
parent  represented  by  the  school  is  the  mother. 
A  little  reflection,  however,  will  show  that  this 
is  a  mistake.  The  unmarried  women  suited  by 
nature  for  successful  class  management  in  large 
schools  are  usually  those  who  show  to  some  ex- 
tent an  overweighting  of  the  masculine  end  of 
their  bisexuality.  In  order  to  deliver  their  mes- 
sage, which  is  essentially  a  message  of  masculine 
to  feminine,  they  inevitably  though  unconsciously 
themselves  assume  at  least  a  modicum  of  the  mas- 
culine element  of  authority. 

It  is  necessary  here  to  recall  what  has  been 
found  by  psychoanalysis  concerning  the  father- 


274   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

image.  To  the  Unconscious  of  the  child,  school 
and  all  it  represents,  no  matter  how  sweetly  the 
work  is  sugar-coated  with  the  different  "  activi- 
ties,"— athletic,  literary,  dramatic,  etc., — is  a 
father-image.  Every  unconscious  trend  of  the 
adolescent  human  (and  remember  how  many  of  us 
are  ourselves,  in  our  Unconscious,  merely  adoles- 
cent and  not  adult)  revolts,  because  it  is  infantile 
and  archaic,  from  any  restrictions  upon  the  natu- 
ral expression  of  its  cravings.  And  the  school  is 
not  only  a  representative  of  society,  like  the  endo- 
psychic  censor,  and  of  the  restrictions  of  society 
upon  the  free  play  of  the  manifestation  of  the 
child's  unconscious  craving,  but  is  in  most  cases  a 
more  highly  organised  system  than  society  itself. 
Nowhere  do  restrictions  bristle  more  threateningly 
than  in  school.  This  is  particularly  true  of  large 
schools  where  much  red  tape  has  to  be  unwound. 
It  is  inevitable,  however,  that  this  should  be 
so.  The  child  cannot  be  left  to  follow  its  own 
phantasies,  which  would  lead  it  deeper  and  deeper 
into  introversion.  The  boy  and  the  girl  must  be 
taken,  as  few  parents  take  them,  and  impressed 
with  the  difference  between  the  pleasure-pain  prin- 
ciple and  the  reality  principle.  That  is  the  great,  we 
might  almost  say  the  only,  task  of  the  teacher, — 
to  make  a  man  out  of  a  boy,  to  make  a  woman 
out  of  a  girl.  There  must  needs  be  a  sacrifice  of 
all  that  the  child  unconsciously  holds  dear.  All 


EDUCATIONAL  APPLICATIONS  275 

its  regressive,  autistic  tendencies  must  be  com- 
bated on  every  hand,  and  it  must  be  led  gently  and 
continuously  to  an  appreciation  of  the  value  of 
directed  thinking. 

Pfister's  words  (p.  466)  are  so  apposite  here 
that  I  must  quote  him  at  some  length : 

:<  The  teacher  very  often  is  for  the  pupil  a 
father-surrogate.  And  yet  if  he  shows  more  traits 
that  recall  the  mother,  he  will  be  identified  with 
her.  The  pupil  therefore  transfers  to  the  repre- 
sentative of  the  parents  the  feelings  belonging  to 
the  one  or  the  other  of  them.  If  he  hates  his 
father,  the  same  hard  feeling  will  be  shown  toward 
the  teacher  who  resembles  him,  while  possibly  an- 
other instructor  receives  the  love  felt  for  the 
mother.  The  transposition  is  very  clear  in  patho- 
logical cases, — for  example,  in  serious  cases  of 
terror. 

'  Therefore  the  teacher  may  be  assured  that  he 
enters  into  the  inheritance  of  his  pupil's  father,  or 
may  even  figure  as  contrast-surrogate.  If  he  acts 
accordingly,  he  is  spared  much  unnecessary  disci- 
pline and  other  unpleasantness.  He  does  good  to 
the  pupil,  too.  In  the  teacher  the  young  neurotic 
wishes  to  subdue  the  father.  He  does  not  see 
that  he  ought  to  learn  for  his  own  sake,  he  thinks 
of  his  mentor,  and  to  his  own  harm  he  gives  him- 
self up  to  the  father-complex. 


276   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

"  If  then  the  teacher  gives  way  to  anger,  the 
pupil  has  gratified  the  evil  pleasure  of  his  Uncon- 
scious. Also  the  other  errors  in  instruction,  which 
the  pupil  discovers  with  shrewd  ingenuity,  are 
evoked  in  great  part  from  the  Unconscious  of  the 
teacher. 

;'  There  are  many  teachers  who  wish  to  identify 
themselves  with  their  fathers  or  to  outdo  them, 
and  who  have  chosen  this  calling  for  that  reason.* 
It  is  evident  that  they  find  themselves  in  a  sad 
position.  There  are  excellently  endowed  teachers 
who  commit  one  educational  mistake  after  an- 
other, treat  the  pupils  in  a  completely  mistaken 
way,  and  get  lamentable  results,  because  they 
labour  under  a  negative  father-complex.  One  of 
our  best  analysts  tells  of  a  patient  who  as  teacher 
identified  himself  with  his  father,  who  was  an 
over-energetic  army  officer,  and  as  a  clergyman 
with  his  mild-mannered  mother.  This  man  acted 
toward  his  pupils  with  the  same  sternness  that  he 
had  perceived  in  his  father,  and  later  toward  his 
parishioners  with  an  almost  feminine  gentleness. 
The  mistakes  of  the  class  mirror  much  more 
clearly  the  complexes  of  their  teacher,  than  their 
lack  of  training  reflects  the  repressions  and  fixa- 
tions of  their  parents.  If  we  wish  to  reform  edu- 

*  Maeder  tells  of  a  neurotic  teacher  who  constantly  phantasied 
himself  as  an  animal  tamer  or  as  a  field  marshal  warring  against 
an  army.  He  would  gladly  have  been  a  soldier.  Poor  pupils! 


EDUCATIONAL  APPLICATIONS  277 

cation,  I  know  of  no  better  means  to  that  end 
than  instructing  the  teachers  in  psychanalysis. 
Whenever  I  have  had  the  pleasure  of  analysing 
my  colleagues  I  have  observed  a  shock  at  the 
revelation  of  many  mistakes  in  instruction  that 
had  been  made  under  the  influence  of  their  com- 
plexes. 

"  This  spiritual  purification  is  the  more  im- 
portant as  the  complexes  of  the  teacher  and  the 
pupils  act  as  magnets  to  each  other.  If  we  are 
unaware  of  our  own  inner  entanglements,  we  prob- 
ably act  the  unconscious  coypist,  and  we  satisfy 
our  ambition,  but  we  only  act  a  part  before  the 
pupil  and  hardly  perceive  his  highest  inter- 
ests. 

1  The  more  fundamentally  we  look  through 
the  pupil  the  more  interesting  he  becomes  to  us. 
And  the  more  deeply  he  feels  himself  seen  through 
by  us  the  more  influence  we  gain  with  him.  He 
will  then  no  longer  attempt,  by  means  of  uncon- 
sciously produced  headaches,  to  avoid  complying 
with  even  necessary  requests,  and,  by  means  of  un- 
consciously arranged  sufferings  to  evoke  our  sym- 
pathy, make  himself  out  to  be  a  sacrifice  to 
over-exertion  when  he  is  lazy. 

"  If  the  teacher  is  freed  from  the  odium  of  an 
unloved  father,  and  becomes  an  approved  father- 
surrogate,  so  again  in  his  turn  he  will  employ  this 
relation  for  the  purpose  of  leading  the  pupil  to 


278    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT, 

the  real  task  of  life,  the  free  self-determination. 
Why  should  not  a  man  teacher  allow  himself  to 
be  admired  just  a  little  by  young  girls  who  have  to 
turn  somewhere  with  their  feelings?  Only  the 
schoolgirls  must  gain  the  sympathy  of  the  teacher 
by  means  of  efficient  work.  Against  hysterical 
infatuation,  which  I  am  wont  to  speak  of  ironically 
as  psychic  sugar  sickness,  one  must  take  a  quiet 
stand  and  gently  decline.  Morally  questionable 
pupils  must  be  treated  with  great  circumspection, 
so  that  in  realising  a  wish  they  do  not  reproach 
the  teacher  with  improper  attentions.* 

"  It  is  certain  that  psychanalysis  essentially 
furthers  the  theory  of  education  in  producing  a 
proper  affective  basis  for  real  study.  It  often  hap- 
pens that  an  aversion  to  a  certain  subject  or  to 
several  of  them  can  be  removed  by  analysis.  One 
boy  was  not  able  to  learn  mathematics  and  lan- 
guages because  his  father  kept  insisting  that  he 
should  study  them,  but  in  natural  science  and 
manual  training,  which  in  his  case  were  associated 
with  his  mother,  he  did  excellent  work.  In  un- 
covering the  father-complex,  psychanalysis  en- 

*  In  the  morally  defective  it  is  likely  to  happen  that  they 
accuse  the  psychoanalyst  of  immoral  purposes  and  even  actions. 
This  happens  not  alone  in  psychoanalytic  practice.  Before  now 
immoral  or  hysterical  girls  have  put  guiltless  men  teachers  in 
jail.  Only  it  appears  that  with  exact  knowledge  of  the  trans- 
ference and  its  proper  treatment  the  analytic  method  is  in  this 
respect  much  less  dangerous  than  any  other. 


EDUCATIONAL  APPLICATIONS  279 

listed  the  excellent  abilities  of  the  boy  in  the  inter- 
est of  the  formerly  hated  subjects." 

The  antagonism  between  teacher  and  pupil  is 
a  natural  one  resting  on  and  being  caused  not  only 
by  the  unconscious  element  in  the  pupil  but  also  by 
that  of  the  teacher.  If  the  pupil  can  get  the 
teacher  by  the  ears,  whether  done  coarsely,  as  in 
the  hoarse  voice  of  an  uncivilised  street  arab  in 
the  schools  of  a  great  city,  or  gently  and  with  re- 
fined elegance  of  language  in  some  girls'  boarding 
school,  it  is  a  pulling  over  of  the  teacher  by  the 
child  to  the  child's  thought  material.  Actually 
there  ought  to  be  enough  mental  material  at  the 
disposal  of  the  teacher  to  weigh  so  much  both  in 
the  teacher's  estimation  and  in  the  pupil's  that  no 
room  could  be  found  for  any  antagonism.  Dis- 
order in  a  schoolroom  is  always  the  indication  of 
a  vacuum  being  filled.  There  is  generally  a 
vacuum  in  the  minds  of  most  pupils  which  needs 
filling  in  the  right  way.  It  is  impossible  for  the 
child  to  fill  it  properly  in  a  schoolroom  except  with 
ideas  directed  by  the  teacher.  If  the  teacher  is 
full  of  unanalysed  complexes  it  will  be  much  easier 
for  the  pupil  to  throw  him  off  the  track.  This  is 
especially  true  of  the  power-complex  which  is  most 
likely  to  be  found  in  the  teacher,  for  the  petty 
power  exercised  in  the  schoolroom  must,  as  Pfister 
suggests,  furnish  an  unconscious  attraction  to 


280   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

many  persons,  leading  them  to  adopt  this  calling, 
just  as  the  vocation  of  locomotive  engineer,  fire- 
man or  policeman  furnishes  an  attraction  to  chil- 
dren of  a  much  younger  age. 


C.   The  Superiority  Feeling 

The  Unconscious  of  the  pupil,  always  looking 
out  for  a  chance  to  get  its  satisfaction  from  a 
sense  of  power,  instinctively  tries  it  out  on  any 
teacher  that  is  either  new  to  the  school  or  new  to 
the  pupil.  It  seems  as  if  no  work  was  to  be  done 
for  a  new  teacher  until  a  trial  of  strength  was 
had  between  the  Unconscious  of  the  teacher  and 
those  of  the  pupils.  There  arise  in  this  connec- 
tion some  very  painful  scenes  in  which  the  teacher 
and  the  pupil  are  really  making  love  to  each  other, 
but  in  archaic  modes.  The  view  of  the  matter 
which  psychoanalysis  forces  upon  us  may  be  illus- 
trated by  an  analysis  of  the  situation  in  which  for 
some  form  of  classroom  disorder  a  pupil  has  be- 
come offensive  to  the  teacher.  The  unsocial  na- 
ture of  the  pupil's  overt  acts  is  rarely  brought 
home  to  him.  He  is  probably  told  repeatedly  that 
while  he  is  making  noises,  or  even  while  he  is 
merely  inattentive,  he  is  impeding  the  work  of  the 
school.  But  while  he  may  verbally  admit  it,  he  is 
at  heart  unconvinced,  for  what  does  his  Uncon- 
scious, which,  by  hypothesis,  is  the  power  under 


EDUCATIONAL  APPLICATIONS  281 

whose  control  the  major  portion  of  his  personality 
is  operating,  care  for  the  work  of  the  school? 
The  sense  of  power  which  must  constantly  be  fed 
in  him  by  all  his  surroundings,  in  order  to  satisfy 
his  unconscious  craving,  is  supported  by  any 
knowledge  on  his  part  which  is  not  shared  by 
the  teacher.  If  he,  in  the  battle  of  knowledge 
which  rages  in  so  many  schools,  can  rest  assured 
that  he  knows  something  that  the  teacher  does 
not  know,  his  feeling  of  superiority  is  satisfied. 
This  accounts  for  a  goodly  proportion  of  class- 
room disorder,  including  mysterious  noises  of  un- 
certain origin,  as  well  as  an  unnecessary  loudness 
of  noises  that,  while  inevitable  where  there  are 
thirty  or  forty  persons  in  an  uncarpeted,  undraped 
room,  is  hidden  under  the  possibility  of  being  an 
accident.  The  pupil  making  this  minor  disturb- 
ance knows  who  made  it.  So  do  several  other 
pupils.  Therefore  they  know  something  that 
the  teacher  does  not  know.  If  the  teacher 
is  not  above  the  childish  state  of  mind,  there 
is  a  battle  waged  by  the  teacher  and  pupil 
on  a  very  low  level, — that  is,  the  level  of 
the  child's  infantility,  expressed  in  this  one  trait 
of  thirst  for  power,  regardless  of  what  that 
power  is. 

Another  form  of  knowledge  in  which  the  pupil 
is  the  superior  of  the  teacher  is  the  external  facts 
of  the  pupil's  home  conditions.  A  very  different 


282   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

attitude  of  the  pupil  has  been  observed  after  the 
teacher  has  asked  the  pupil  who  his  father  is,  and 
what  is  his  business,  how  many  brothers  and 
sisters  he  has,  etc.,  or  any  number  of  personal  de- 
tails, without  the  slightest  reference  to  the  form 
of  disorder  which  may  have  caused  the  teacher's 
attention  to  be  specially  directed  toward  this  pupil. 
Often  too  the  work  improves  at  once.  It  might 
be  said  that  if  the  teacher  by  this  means  takes 
away  the  superiority  of  the  pupil  in  this  particular, 
he  is  also  descending  to  a  level  on  which  any  battle 
of  knowledge  is  waged.  But  the  knowledge  of 
who  made  a  certain  noise  in  the  schoolroom  is  not 
comparable  with  the  knowledge  of  the  social 
status  of  the  pupil  in  value  for  multiplying  the 
social  relations  between  the  teacher  and  the  pupil, 
and  there  is  a  very  different  effect  produced.  It 
may  be  said  in  general  that  the  pupil  unconsciously 
realises  the  difference  between  the  teacher's  know- 
ing his  subject,  and  his  object,  namely  the  pupil, 
and  acts  accordingly.  The  pupil  unconsciously 
knows  when  the  teacher  does  not  know  him,  and 
also  that  it  is  the  teacher's  duty  to  know  him,  and 
how  to  handle  him.  Even  the  unconscious  realisa- 
tion on  the  part  of  the  pupil  that  the  teacher  is 
defective  in  that  one  particular  is  a  cause  of  the 
pupil's  feeling  of  superiority,  which  as  we  have 
seen  is  so  great  a  necessity  to  his  satisfactions 
from  the  infantile  point  of  view,  which  satisfac- 


EDUCATIONAL  APPLICATIONS  283 

tions  he  is  constrained  by  his  Unconscious  to  get  at 
any  cost. 

Connected  with  all  this  is  also  the  child's  natural 
tendency  toward  exhibitionism.  Just  as  we  have 
seen  in  the  account  of  the  development  of  the  indi- 
vidual psyche  that  one  of  the  characteristics  of  the 
infant  was  to  gain  pleasure  from  the  stimulation 
of  the  cutaneous  erogenous  zones,  by  running 
around  unclothed,  so  the  descendant  of  that  desire 
to  show  off  (and  its  converse,  to  peep)  is  the 
wish — unconscious,  to  be  sure — to  show  off  be- 
fore schoolmates  and  teacher.  And  the  trait 
which  if  developed  far  enough  is  to  make  an  adult 
of  the  child, — namely,  the  wish  to  effect  changes 
not  upon  himself  but  upon  the  outside  world, — is 
sometimes  arrested  at  the  point  where  his  outside 
world  is  constituted  mainly  by  persons  on  whom 
it  is  very  easy  to  make  some  sort  of  effect.  The 
Unconscious  of  the  child  does  not  care  what  the 
effect  is.  It  cares  only  to  feel  the  results  of  its 
actions  on  some  other  person.  Hence  it  teases  its 
companions,  because  the  effect  of  that  teasing, 
whether  pleasant  or  unpleasant  to  the  person 
teased,  are  its  effects,  produced  by  its  efforts,  and 
gratify  its  wish  for  power.  In  irritating  the 
teacher,  therefore,  the  child  is  unconsciously  ex- 
pressing its  wish  for  control  and  power  over  the 
external  world  which  later  is  perhaps  to  consist 
not  solely  of  persons  but  of  things.  It  will  be 


284   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

well,  therefore,  to  analyse  the  situation  where  the 
pupil  has  succeeded  in  irritating  the  teacher. 
There  are  loud-voiced  teachers  in  every  school, 
their  voices  unmistakably  showing  their  irritation. 
So  I  shall  not  be  very  wide  of  the  mark  if  I  point 
out  to  these  and  others  how  this  matter  of  irrita- 
tion is  regarded  by  psychoanalysis. 

D.    "He  Irritates  Me" 

The  words  "  He  irritates  me  "  or  "  He  arouses 
my  antipathy  "  are  equivalent  to  "  He  excites  my 
Unconscious."  These  words  may  be  imagined  as 
either  spoken  or  thought  by  either  a  male  or  a 
female  teacher,  and  "  He  "  may  stand  for  "  She  " 
in  either  case.  Now  because  there  is  in  the  Un- 
conscious only  one  kind  of  excitement, — viz. : 
sexual  excitement, — the  proposition  is  equivalent 
to  "  He  sexually  excites  my  Unconscious."  The 
struggle  between  the  archaic  Unconscious  and  the 
modern  social  conscious  life  is  such  that  this  an- 
tagonism implied  in  the  conscious  repugnance  and 
the  unconscious  attraction  is  quite  comprehensible. 
The  verbal  expression  "  He  irritates  me  "  is  the 
external  manifestation  of  a  psychic  state  in  which 
there  is  a  transference,  positive  or  negative  mat- 
ters little,  for  the  positive  unconscious  transfer- 
ence is  usually  compensated  for  by  a  negative  con- 
scious affection,  and  vice  versa.  The  significant 


EDUCATIONAL  APPLICATIONS  285 

feature  of  the  situation  is  that  if  I  am  irritated  by 
any  person  or  thing,  my  irritation  shows  that  the 
person  or  thing  is  occupying  my  thoughts  too 
much.  My  thoughts  ought  to  be  completely 
occupied  with  matters  which  by  their  importance 
preclude  the  possibility  of  being  disturbed  by  any 
fortuitous  circumstance.  In  other  words,  there 
exists  in  the  mind  a  group  of  thoughts  (repre- 
sentations) having  an  unpleasant  affective  tone, 
where  there  ought  either  to  be  affective  indiffer- 
ence or  a  pleasant  affective  tone,  this  requirement 
for  mental  wholesomeness  depending  on  whether 
the  pleasure-pain  principle  or  the  reality  principle 
is  given  the  preference.  Thus  any  irritation  on  the 
part  of  the  teacher  marks  him  at  once  as  being  on 
a  lower  level  of  development  than  is  desirable  in 
one  who  is  supposed  to  be  able  to  raise  others  to 
a  higher  level  of  social  development.  It  should 
not  be  forgotten,  either,  that  the  Unconscious  of 
the  irritating  child  is  making  every  attempt  in  its 
power  to  produce  any  effect  upon  the  teacher,  no 
matter  what  that  effect  may  be.  The  child,  of 
course,  does  not  know  this,  and  his  ignorance 
of  it  but  makes  him  the  more  subject  to  its 
control. 

On  the  theory  that  avoidance  of  pain  and 
the  seeking  of  pleasure  is  the  greatest  desideratum 
in  our  plan  of  life,  it  would  be  necessary  to  replace 
the  thought  "  He  irritates  me  "  with  some  other 


286    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

thought  such  as  "  But  he  [that  is,  some  other  he], 
or  it,  gratifies  me."  This  is  because  gratifying 
thoughts — i.e.  those  containing  pleasure  elements, 
and  therefore  constructive  and  anabolic  because 
pleasure-giving — should  predominate  in  the  mind 
of  any  person,  and  will  predominate  in  the  person 
who  is  best  to  perform  his  work  in  the  world. 
This  is  to  be  taken  in  connection  with  the  fact  that 
the  psyche,  in  states  of  mind  that  are  gratifying, 
is  united,  while  in  states  of  mind  containing  an 
unpleasant  factor  it  is  disunited  and  distracted, 
at  variance  with  itself  and  the  scene  of  a 
conflict  in  which  part  of  the  psyche  is  at 
war  with  the  other  part.  So  that  even  on 
the  comparatively  low  plane  of  the  pleasure- 
pain  principle  the  feeling  that  he  irritates  me  is 
a  feeling  that  should  at  once  be  replaced  by  an- 
other of  opposite  affective  tone.  The  fact  is  that 
the  thoroughly  analysed  individual  ought  not  to 
be  irritated  at  anything,  and  for  two  reasons.  The 
first  is  that  he  should  realise  that  being  irritated  at 
anything  shows  that  he  is  too  much  interested  in 
that  thing,  and  second  he  should  know  that  the 
irritation  is  not  a  quality  of  the  object  itself  that 
irritates  him.  Inanimate  objects,  of  course  every- 
body will  admit,  are  not  to  blame  for  anything; 
and  when  he  realises  that  animate  objects,  men, 
women,  children  and  animals,  do  what  they  do  for 
the  same  reasons  that  motivate  his  own  acts,  he 


EDUCATIONAL  APPLICATIONS  287 

cannot  consistently  blame  them  for  anything  they 
do.  He  is,  besides,  to  remember  that  his  clear 
obligation  is  to  adapt  himself  to  his  environment, 
whatever  it  is.  In  this  case  he  is  not  to  do  that 
which  his  own  Unconscious  would  naturally  lead 
him  to  do, — namely,  to  get  rid  of  the  irritating 
animate  or  inanimate  object  as  soon  as  possible  or 
to  devise  means  of  ignoring  its  existence.  This 
would  be  but  introverting  and  trying  to  get  from 
himself  the  satisfaction  which  rightly  he  ought  to 
get  from  the  external  world.  He  is,  on  the  other 
hand,  to  get  rid  as  soon  as  possible  of  the  irrita- 
tion itself,  by  rearranging  the  relations  between 
himself  and  the  irritating  object,  so  that  he  can 
continue  with  his  appointed  or  his  desired  work 
with  the  greatest  possible  efficiency. 

If  the  situation  "  He  irritates  me  "  is  consid- 
ered from  the  other  point  of  view, — namely,  that 
of  the  reality  principle, — the  affects  will  have 
to  be  ruled  out  entirely,  on  the  ground  that  the 
person  acting  entirely  on  the  reality  principle  is 
indifferent  to  all  emotions  that  are  connected  with 
his  activities. 

"  He  irritates  me  "  is  not  literally  true  because 
the  affects  characterising  that  state  of  mind  called 
irritation  originate  and  go  through  their  full 
course  of  development  in  the  Unconscious  of  the 
irritated  person.  All  affects  are  reactions  of  the 
Unconscious  to  the  stimuli  streaming  in  from 


288    MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

the  environment.  Whether  these  affects  are 
pleasant  or  unpleasant,  constructive  or  destruc- 
tive in  their  physiological  effect,  depends  not  at 
all  upon  any  quality  inherent  in  the  stimuli  them- 
selves, but  on  a  combination  of  qualities  which 
are  innate  in  the  psyche.  To  the  pure  all  things 
are  pure,  and  to  the  young  all  adventures,  even 
mishaps,  are  fun.  The  misplacement  of  a  dollar 
is  accompanied  by  one  affect  in  the  poor  man,  by 
another  in  the  rich  man  (not  the  miser,  for  the 
miser  is  a  poor  man  in  the  bestowal  of  money). 
So  that  to  say  "  He  irritates  me  "  or  "  He  arouses 
my  antipathy  "  is  another  way,  a  blind,  illogical 
way,  of  saying:  "  I  cause  myself  unpleasant  emo- 
tions because  of  his  conduct."  In  putting  this 
proposition  in  the  simple  active  transitive  form, 
we  are  making  a  misstatement.  He  is  not  doing 
the  irritating.  All  the  irritating  that  occurs  is 
being  done  by  my  reaction  to  him.  It  is  all  my  act, 
not  his.  How  then  shall  we  take  teasing,  which 
looks  on  the  face  of  it  exactly  like  voluntary  pur- 
posive attempts  at  irritating,  designed  by  the  per- 
petrator as  a  means  to  hurt  or  annoy  me  ?  There 
are  several  ways  of  looking  at  this.  The  first  and 
most  obvious  way  is  to  see  that  his  attentions  to 
me  are  caused  by  his  undue  interest  in  me, — an 
interest  which  may,  by  the  proper  methods,  at  once 
be  turned  into  actions  with  pleasant  results, — or 
that,  in  the  case  of  children  teasing  each  other,  it: 


EDUCATIONAL  APPLICATIONS  289 

is  merely  a  matter  of  natural  Sadism  or  possibly 
exhibitionism. 

Another  way  is  to  realise  that  his  Unconscious, 
like  mine,  is  misleading  him  as  it  does  me.  That 
implies  that  if  he  really  understood  what  he  was 
doing,  he  would  immediately  change  and  do  some- 
thing else,  and  that  if  he  is  incapable  of  under- 
standing what  he  is  doing  he  is  completely  insane 
and  irresponsible.  This  is  not  the  case  in  the  ma- 
jority of  instances,  as  we  know.  We  do  not  live 
in  close  touch  with  such  people,  as  a  general  rule. 
In  one  way  I  should  be  flattered  at  the  attention 
I  am  receiving.  Many  people  are.  They  would 
much  rather  be  teased  than  completely  ignored, 
and  as  for  the  other  thing, — being  openly  made 
love  to, — that  is  accompanied  by  too  much 
dynamics  for  the  thing  to  be  completely  acceptable. 
There  is  aggression  even  in  love.  The  central 
point  of  the  whole  consideration  is  the  bare  fact 
that  those  thoughts  and  not  others  occupy  his 
mind.  Like  all  other  thoughts,  they  have  their 
source  in  the  Unconscious,  and  for  anyone  to  be 
occupied  with  a  certain  line  of  thoughts  involving 
the  affects  of  another  person  is  a  kind  of  autistic 
or  undirected  thinking,  which  it  is  the  object  of  so- 
ciety and  its  instrument,  education,  as  much  as  pos- 
sible to  do  away  with.  It  is  to  be  noted  here  what 
becomes  of  the  person  who  thinks  he  is  being 
wronged,  i.e.  irritated,  by  all  men.  He  becomes 


29o   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

a  paranoiac  if  the  suspicion  is  consistently  carried 
on  too  far.  The  difference  between  paranoia  and 
suspiciousness  is  one  of  degree  only.  All  sup- 
positions that  we  are  the  object  of  hatred  by  many 
persons  are  essentially  paranoiac.  For  they  show 
a  wrong  attitude  toward  reality,  or  that  part  of 
it  constituted  by  our  fellow-men.  True  rationality 
laughs  at  the  supposition  that  there  is  a  concerted 
devotion  to  the  cause  of  injuring  one  person,  but 
that  is  exactly  what  is  at  the  base  of  the  paranoiac 
delusions. 

So,  then,  the  question  arises  as  to  what  should 
be  the  attitude  of  the  teacher  in  any  circumstances 
that  he  may  find  irritating.  Of  course  the  readi- 
est expedient  is  to  conceal  the  irritation.  That 
only  drugs  the  symptom,  it  does  not  cure  the  dis- 
ease. The  only  cure  is  a  complete  analysis  of  the 
mental  elements  entering  into  the  situation.  This 
is  inevitably  different  in  different  persons,  accord- 
ing to  their  development  along  the  line  which 
goes  from  infantility  to  adulthood,  as  briefly 
sketched  in  the  chapter  on  the  development  of  the 
individual  psyche.  It  is  possible  that  there  may  be 
some  cases  in  which  the  mental  constitution  of  the 
child  plays  a  great  part  in  the  situation,  as,  for 
instance,  if  the  child  is  naturally  a  nervous  case 
and  below  the  normal  in  the  psychical  develop- 
ment indicated  above.  But  the  chances  are  that 
the  trouble  lies  only  with  the  teacher. 


EDUCATIONAL  APPLICATIONS  291 

The  expedient  of  concealing  the  irritation  is  a 
very  poor  one,  too,  because  it  almost  never  works. 
There  are  too  many  signs  of  irritation  uncon- 
sciously displayed  by  the  teacher  which  the  Un- 
conscious of  the  pupil  is  only  too  eagerly  watching 
for,  because  they  give  it  a  very  solid  satisfaction. 
We  have  here  as  everywhere  both  unconscious 
systems  working,  that  of  the  teacher  and  that  of 
the  pupil.  The  results  of  the  unconscious  obser- 
vation of  the  teacher  by  the  pupil  are  unknown  to 
the  teacher,  and  of  course  the  results  of  the 
teacher's  unconscious  attitude  toward  the  pupil 
are  unknown  by  the  pupil.  The  duty  of  the 
teacher  in  this  case  is  the  same  as  the  duty  of  all 
humans  in  all  the  situations  in  which  they  find 
themselves  in  their  daily  life,  which  is  to  bring 
into  consciousness  the  elements  of  their  uncon- 
scious life,  and,  as  we  saw  in  the  chapter  on 
the  cure  of  diseases,  to  work  off  the  emo- 
tions connected  with  the  experience  which  has 
taken  on  an  unpleasant  affect,  and  thus  to  remove 
not  only  the  unpleasant  affect  but  the  chances  that 
possibly  this  unpleasant  affect  may  become  sub- 
ject to  conversion, — that  is,  that  the  energy  con- 
tained in  it  may  discharge  itself  upon  the  physical 
organism  of  the  person  thus  disturbed.  Of  course 
it  is  possible  that  the  mental  state  of  the  teacher 
contains  complexes  which  cannot  be  brought  into 
consciousness  unaided.  In  that  case  the  teacher 


292   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

will  need  a  complete  analysis  by  a  trained  analyst 
in  order  to  discover  what  are  the  real  causes  at 
work  in  the  Unconscious.  But  it  is  also  possible 
that  a  little  self-analysis,  which  is  the  only  form 
available  at  present  for  the  majority  of  persons, 
may  throw  some  light  upon  the  matter  of  some  of 
the  schoolroom  troubles  which  have  been  here  dis- 
cussed. By  studying  his  dreams,  his  mistakes  in 
spelling,  reading,  writing,  speaking,  and  his  symp- 
tomatic actions,  trivial  (?)  mannerisms,  habits  of 
doing  even  the  most  commonplace  things,  he  may 
be  able  to  place  himself  where  he  belongs  on  the 
scale  of  development  of  the  psyche  and  take  up- 
ward steps.  The  chances  are  against  the  average 
mortal's  doing  this  unaided,  because  the  results  of 
such  measuring  of  self  on  the  scale  of  psychical 
development  are  so  excruciatingly  humiliating. 
Such  a  mental  inventory  is  so  opposed  to  the  in- 
clinations of  his  own  Unconscious  that  it  throws 
in  the  way  of  the  accountant  every  possible  ob- 
struction. First  of  all  it  will  make  him  forget  to 
do  it  at  the  proper  time.  He  may  have  difficulty 
in  remembering  his  dreams.  It  will  constantly 
occur  to  him  that  the  whole  proceeding  is  bosh, 
anyway.  Arguments  against  psychoanalysis  will 
accumulate  in  his  fore-conscious  and  will  urge  him 
to  make  a  more  profitable  use  of  his  time,  etc. 


EDUCATIONAL  APPLICATIONS  293 

E.  Memory  Work 

The  concrete  problems  of  education  are  so 
numerous  and  the  light  afforded  them  by  the 
psychoanalytic  viewpoint  is  so  great  and  so  un- 
failing that  it  would  be  impossible  in  a  single 
chapter  to  do  more  than  glance  at  a  few  of  them. 
One  of  the  most  important  considerations  of  edu- 
cational theory  is  the  relation  of  memory  work 
to  work  that  employs  the  reasoning  faculty.  It 
will  be  seen  that  if  the  distinction  between  directed 
and  undirected  thinking  is  applied  here  we  shall 
find  that  while  memory  work  appears  at  first  as 
a  case  of  directed  thinking,  it  really  contains  ele- 
ments of  the  undirected  kind  in  such  proportions 
that  it  almost  completely  vitiates  it  as  an  educa- 
tional method.  It  seems  to  belong  to  the  directed 
kind  of  thinking,  inasmuch  as  it  requires  the  fol- 
lowing of  a  direction  on  the  part  of  the  pupil. 
He  must  subject  his  mind  to  the  constraint  of 
following  the  lead  of  some  other  whose  words  he 
is  memorising.  So  far  so  good.  But  while  the  act 
of  memorising  is  a  submission  on  the  part  of  the 
Unconscious  to  the  dictation  of  the  other  person 
and  in  that  sense  fulfils  one  of  the  requirements  of 
social  activity,  the  reproduction  of  the  piece  that 
is  memorised  falls  almost  wholly  in  the  sphere  of 
undirected  thinking.  The  pupil  who  is  reciting  is 
to  a  great  extent  listening  to  the  words  of  the  Un- 


294   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

conscious.  We  must  remember  that  it  is  com- 
paratively easy  for  young  persons  to  commit  to 
memory,  and  after  they  have  done  so  the  process 
of  reproducing  it  is  easier  still  and  requires  noth- 
ing of  the  creative  or  the  judgment-forming  ac- 
tivity which  is  necessary  in  the  simplest  forms  of 
classification.  In  the  act  of  reciting  from  memory 
the  pupil  is  as  it  were  borne  onward  by  the  un- 
conscious power  from  within  and  is  not  using  the 
faculty  of  directed  thinking  except  in  the  most 
attenuated  form.  A  piece  once  learned  by  heart 
needs  no  further  effort  expended  upon  it.  The 
form  of  mentality  employed  in  reciting  it  even 
for  the  first  time  is  akin  with  all  kinds  of  droning 
monotony.  The  memorised  piece,  like  all  things 
that  have  crystallised  into  a  fixed  form,  is  to  all 
intents  and  purposes  dead  and  as  useless  for  the 
real  constructive  work  of  the  psyche  as  the  monu- 
ments of  a  graveyard.  All  the  mental  work  that 
could  be  done  on  it  was  done  when  the  piece  was 
memorised. 

In  mentioning  the  droning  monotony  character- 
ising the  mentality  of  pupils  who  are  reciting  from 
memory  I  wish  also  to  call  attention  to  the  fact 
that  it  is  very  hard  to  get  any  young  person  to 
put  very  much  expression  into  any  piece  memo- 
rised,— first,  because  the  expressiveness  is  a  matter 
of  experience  with  the  world,  of  which  the  young 
people  have  not  very  much,  and  second,  because 


EDUCATIONAL  APPLICATIONS  295 

it  requires  a  great  amount  of  mental  effort  to 
learn  the  means  of  dramatic  expression,  and  men- 
tal activity  is  not  characteristic  of  the  infantile. 
So  the  recitation  becomes  a  dreamy  affair  in  which 
the  auditor  notices  at  once  that  the  mind  of  the 
child  is  in  some  other  place  than  the  ideal  place 
represented  by  the  piece  being  recited.  If  these 
remarks  apply  to  dramatic  recitations  they  apply 
with  all  the  more  force  to  the  brief  efforts  neces- 
sary to  remember  a  theorem  or  a  sentence  in  a 
foreign  language.  So  that  on  both  counts  psycho- 
analysis furnishes  a  very  definite  reason  why 
memory  work  is  a  very  inferior  method  of  de- 
veloping the  psyche.  It  does  not  subject  the 
mind  to  the  requirements  of  directed  thinking, 
but  on  the  contrary  gives  a  free  rein  to  the  un- 
directed variety,  or  phantasying.  For  the  piece 
once  memorised  becomes  a  variety  of  automatic 
action,  and  all  that  is  necessary  is  to  touch  off  the 
first  link  in  the  chain  and  the  whole  thing  repeats 
itself.  Its  becoming  automatic  removes  it  at  once 
from  the  sphere  of  things  which  have  to  be  rea- 
soned about,  that  is,  to  be  compared  with  other 
things.  And  we  have  seen  in  a  previous  chapter 
that  the  fundamental  condition  of  reasoning  is 
classification  or  reasoning  by  analogy,  from  which 
we  derive  even  the  propositions  which  form  the 
major  and  minor  premises  of  formal  logic.  In 
memory  work  there  is  no  such  process  of  com- 


296   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

parison  and  classification,  but  instead  of  that  a 
continuous  and  more  or  less  monotonous  series  of 
words,  which  by  their  very  monotony  furnish  the 
greatest  inducement  to  the  mind  to  relapse  into 
the  condition  of  phantasying.  I  think  all  will 
agree  with  me  in  this  when  it  is  remembered  how 
very  insecure  are  the  assurances  that  the  child  is 
supplementing  with  the  images  of  his  own  imagi- 
nation the  matter  that  is  memorised.  If  we  were 
sure  that  the  child  got  the  same  ideas  out  of  a 
given  formula  of  words  that?  the  teacher,  with  his 
complementing  experience,  does,  it  would  be  a 
different  matter.  Even  if  he  did,  there  would 
still  remain  the  question  as  to  whether  he  was 
not  merely  phantasying  with  the  images  of  the 
thought  of  the  memorised  passage.  All  forms  of 
monotonous  amusement, — beating  of  a  drum  or 
whistling  or  humming  or  some  kinds  of  singing, — 
are  a  species  of  self-hypnotisation  in  which  an 
activity  is  carried  on  until  it  reaches  a  maximum 
amount  of  gratification  for  that  kind  of  activity. 
Its  chief  characteristic  is  that  the  satisfaction  is 
of  the  solitary  or  a  social  sort.  In  carrying  on  a 
monotonous  activity,  either  mental  or  physical, 
the  psyche  is  drawn  into  itself  and  the  satisfactions 
are  all  subjective.  This  is  very  manifest  in  recita- 
tions of  any  great  length.  There  is  not  one  chance 
in  a  hundred  that  the  auditors  are  deriving  any- 
thing like  the  satisfaction  out  of  it  that  the  speaker 


EDUCATIONAL  APPLICATIONS  297 

is.    And  the  remark  holds  true  of  shorter  memory 
gems  in  a  smaller  degree.     No  amount  of  para-' 
digms  learned  by  heart  ever  contributed  an  iota 
to  the  understanding  of  a  Greek  drama  or  a 
Latin  epic. 

Any  teacher  putting  too  much  emphasis  on 
memory  work  is  himself  taking  refuge  in  his  own 
infantility.  For  the  activity  of  the  teacher  in 
testing  a  pupil  for  his  ability  to  remember  is 
one  of  the  least  productive  activities,  not  to  men- 
tion that  native  retentiveness  is  in  the  long  run 
pretty  nearly  equal,  and  so  does  not  need  testing. 
We  all  know  that  a  teacher  should  not  merely 
"  hear  lessons."  He  can  do  nothing,  else  except 
hear  lessons  if  he  will  not  study  the  pupil's  point, 
of  view  with  the  purpose  of  getting  the  pupil 
to  take  a  different  point  of  view.  Every  step  of 
progress  presents  new  points  of  view  and  con- 
versely every  new  angle  from  which  we  see  a 
thing  shows  a  progress,  or  a  movement  of  some 
extent.  Those  who  have  no  new  views  are  those 
who  stay  immovable  and  undeveloped.  But  the 
new  point  of  view  is  a  reclassification,  or  at  least 
is  based  on  a  reclassification,  of  old  materials. 
We  get  our  inspiring  view  of  distant  valley  and 
ocean  by  means  of  moving  up  the  side  of  the 
mountain.  But  we  may  move  down?  Yes,  of 
course;  but  the  type  of  action  is  totally  different. 
In  going  down  we  are  working  only  to  keep  our- 


298   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

selves  from  falling,  a  mode  of  describing  even 
ordinary  walking  on  the  level.  All  education 
is  a  sort  of  resymbolisation  of  the  kind  men- 
tioned in  the  chapter  on  Therapy.  If  we  need  a 
resymbolisation  in  order  to  enable  the  psyche  to 
cure  some  of  the  physical  diseases,  we  similarly 
need  to  cause<  a  resymbolisation  in  the  pupil's 
mind  in  order  to  enable  him  to  rid  himself  of  his 
infantility. 

If  the  resistance  against  school  as  a  father- 
image  should  be  removed  at  the  very  beginning 
of  the  child's  education,  it  would  not  operate  as 
it  does  now  to  make  real  education  of  the  emo- 
tions and  the  will  an  utter  impossibility.  But 
those  instincts  of  the  child  which  are  at  variance 
with  the  aims  of  evolving  social  organism  are 
most  strongly  repressed  at  the  outset  of  the 
child's  school  experience,  and  indeed  by  the  most 
authoritative  and  paternalistic  methods.  In  con- 
trolling the  young  child  with  authority,  and  in 
forcing  him  to  conform  with  certain  arbitrary 
rules,  we  crush  in  the  bud  what  later  we  most 
desire  to  develop, — namely,  an  independence  of 
thought  and  a  self-conscious  adaptation  to  the 
needs  of  society. 

It  is  necessary  only  to  realise  that  the  father 
or  the  father-surrogate  represents  not  only  re- 
straints but  protection,  not  only  roughness  but 
warmth,  to  realise  that  the  attitude  of  the  child 


EDUCATIONAL  APPLICATIONS  299 

to  the  father-image  is  a  composite  one.  He  re- 
sents the  restriction,  yet  he  is  glad  to  repose  in 
the  absence  of  responsibility  which  an  authorita- 
tive direction  of  his  activities  will  give.  The  atti- 
tude of  society  toward  the  child  is  exactly  the 
reverse  of  what  educational  practice  would  seem 
to  indicate.  Society  wishes  the  child  to  accept 
cheerfully  the  necessary  restrictions  and  to  take 
as  much  responsibility  as  he  can  manage.  So- 
ciety represents  a  force  in  opposition  to  the  force 
of  psychical  gravitation  mentioned  above.  So- 
ciety continually  calls  the  child,  the  human  in- 
dividual of  any  age,  forward  and  upward  and 
outward;  the  psychic  law  of  gravitation  is  con- 
tinuously pulling  the  human  of  any  stage  of  de- 
velopment backward,  downward  and  inward. 

Now,  the  school  as  at  present  constituted  does 
not  so  much  develop  the  independence  as  the 
dependence  of*the  child.  We  confine  him  in  such 
a  manner  as  to  make  him  think  his  confinement 
is  the  main  part  of  his  education,  and  not  his 
liberation.  Just  as  it  is  an  art  to  arrange  the 
voices  of  a  harmony  in  such  a  way  that  while 
pleasing  the  ear  they  may  not  break  loose  from 
any  of  the  restrictions  of  polyphonic  composition, 
and  yet  that  while  not  leaving  their  convention- 
ally appointed  path  they  may  still  please  the  ear, 
so  it  is  an  art  of  the  highest  type,  the  art  of 
conduct,  to  arrange  the  acts  of  a  harmonious  day 


300   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

in  such  relations  that  they  may  show  the  greatest 
variety  with  the  least  giving  up  of  restraint.  We 
have  certain  limitations  imposed  upon  us  first  by 
nature,  such  as  that  we  cannot  be  in  two  places  at 
once,  secondly  by  society,  such  as  that  we  can- 
not be  two  persons  at  once.  But  outside  these 
limits  we  are  to  express  our  individuality  as 
freely,  as  abundantly  as  we  can. 

But  in  modern  education  of  the  European- 
American  type  (hyphenated  education)  we  are 
accentuating  only  the  restraint,  only  the  father- 
image  elements,  which  spell  negation  for  the 
pupil.  The  constituents  of  the  father-image  as 
seen  by  the  pupil  in  the  school  are  generally  only 
deterrent  of  action  and  progression.  Even  the 
formulations  of  various  kinds  which  he  has  to 
learn  by  heart  are  from  one  point  of  view  to  be 
considered  as  a  release  from  the  necessity  of 
forming  these  generalisations  himself.  Already 
worded  principles  are  what  he  wants.  They  give 
him  the  only  satisfaction  he  gets  from  authority, 
— a  freedom  from  responsibility  in  this  case 
consisting  of  having  the  general  principles  ob- 
served for  him,  and  an  authority  which,  at  the 
outset  of  his  education,  paralyses  forever  his 
ability  to  think  for  himself.  Much  rather  should 
we  act  toward  him  with  the  same  expectation  that 
Agassiz  had  of  his  pupil  to  whom  he  gave  a  fish 
to  study,  with  not  the  slightest  inkling  of  what 


EDUCATIONAL  APPLICATIONS  301 

he  was  required  to  find  out  about  it.  We  should 
hold  from  the  child  the  general  principles  for  the 
purpose  of  making  him  wrest  them  from  things 
himself. 

F.  Abstract  Thinking 

The  psychoanalytic  concept  of  the  Uncon- 
scious, when  applied  to  statements  like  the  fol- 
lowing, illustrates  how  wonderfully  the  newer 
psychology  illuminates  educational  problems.  "  It 
is  difficult  for  the  average  person  to  do  much 
abstract  and  sustained  thinking.  There  is  ap- 
parently an  inertia  of  mind  to  be  overcome  in 
order  to  do  real  thinking.  The  mind  becomes 
habituated  to  acting  in  certain  fixed  channels. 
This  is  rendered  more  probable  on  account  of 
stereotyped  language  forms.  We  sometimes 
think  we  are  expressing  ideas  when  we  are  using 
only  the  symbols.* 

The  uncertainty  expressed  in  this  passage  is 
replaced  in  the  psychoanalytic  method  by  definite 
statements  of  results.  We  know  now  just  why 
it  is  so  difficult  for  the  average  person  to  do 
much  abstract  and  sustained  thinking.  It  is  be- 
cause it  is  directed  thinking,  as  contrasted  with 
phantasying,  and  consequently  runs  counter  to 
the  psychic  gravitation,  to  the  wishes  of  the  un- 
conscious Titan.  This  hypothesis  of  the  uncon- 

•Bolton,  F.  E. :  Principles  of  Education,  p.  595. 


302   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

scious  wish,  which  must  be  gratified  at  any  cost, 
clearly  explains  why  there  is  "  apparently  an 
inertia  "  "  to  be  overcome  in  order  to  do  real 
thinking."  Real  thinking,  being  directed  think- 
ing, requires  a  total  sacrifice,  for  the  time  being, 
of  all  sensuous  wishing,  which  is  the  tendency  of 
the  great  percentage  of  our  psyche.  Against 
such  a  current  it  is  of  course  difficult  to  make 
any  headway. 

To  be  sure,  the  mind  "  becomes  habituated  to 
acting  in  certain  fixed  channels  "  and  we  know 
from  psychoanalysis  just  what  those  channels  are 
and  why  the  mind  becomes  thus  habituated.  The 
psyche  which,  since  its  inception,  has  been  wish- 
ing for  sense  gratifications  sees  in  directed  think- 
ing all  its  food  taken  away  from  it,  "  abstracted  " 
by  abstract  thinking.  Is  it  surprising  that,  with 
such  a  weight,  the  minds  of  most  people  rise 
with  much  difficulty  to  thinking  directed  to  a 
definite  goal,  which  requires  the  abandonment  of 
so  much  of  the  thought  process  (i.e.,  phantasy- 
ing)  that  is  natural  to  mankind? 

As  to  the  "  stereotyped  language  forms,"  we 
see  by  the  aid  of  psychoanalysis  that  many  of  the 
language  forms  themselves  are  but  the  expres- 
sions of  wishes  of  former  generations,  which  are 
inherited  by  succeeding  generations,  and  are 
taken  on  because  they  fit  in  the  present  the  same 
general  cravings  which  they  did  in  the  past. 


EDUCATIONAL  APPLICATIONS  303 

If  we  think  we  are  "  expressing  ideas  when  we 
are  using  only  the  symbols  "  it  is  because  we  do 
not  really  know  what  the  symbols  represent. 
But  psychoanalysis  teaches  us  that  a  symbol  is 
always  the  representative  of  the  wish.  In  place 
of  the  crassest  wishes  are  frequently  substituted 
the  most  harmless  symbols.  Until  we  received 
the  elucidations  afforded  by  the  newer  psychology 
we  did  not  understand  these  symbols.  Now  we 
know  that  every  expression,  whether  of  our  own 
idea  or  others',  is  a  symbol.  As  every  human 
phenomenon  is  a  more  or  less  distorted,  dis- 
placed, condensed  or  otherwise  transformed 
symbol  of  the  one  primordial  craving,  it  is  most 
illuminating  and  advantageous  to  have  revealed 
to  us  this  essential  unity  in  the  sensational  multi- 
plicity of  our  daily  life  and  language. 

"  Many  people  are  so  unused  to  thinking  for 
themselves  that  they  would  be  frightened  at  the 
appearance  in  consciousness  of  a  thought  really 
their  own"  (Id.,  p.  591). 

This  represents  the  attitude  of  all  persons  in 
spite  of  the  adjuration  of  philosophers  to  "  Know 
thyself !  "  Thinking  for  oneself  necessitates  the 
prerequisite  of  knowing  oneself.  The  first  im- 
pulse with  all  of  us,  as  we  have  seen  in  the  sec- 
tion on  the  OEdipus  Complex,  is  to  be  shocked  at 
the  revelation  that  the  QEdipus  complex  is  uni- 
versal among  mankind  and  is  sublimated  or  over- 


304  MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

come  in  varying  degrees  by  different  people.  We 
are  frightened  at  the  appearance  in  consciousness 
of  thoughts  really  our  own  because  the  principal 
thoughts  that  are  really  our  own  are  those  con- 
nected with  our  own  sexuality,  and  we  fear  to 
draw  the  logical  conclusions  from  them.  Peo- 
ple are  unused  to  thinking  for  themselves  be- 
cause all  really  constructive  thought,  when  ap- 
plied to  themselves,  confronts  them  with  the 
necessity  of  the  great  sacrifice  of  giving  up  the 
undirected  form  of  thinking  and  of  admitting 
into  their  consciousness  the  facts  of  human  fate. 
This  does  not  mean  that  we  have  to  keep  the 
children  constantly  reminded  of  death,  and  en- 
large upon  its  terrors,  but  we  do  have  to  get  them 
gradually  to  give  up  the  introversional  regres- 
sion toward  the  modes  of  thought  which  typify 
dissociation  from  the  rest  of  society  and  dissocia- 
tion between  the  different  elements  of  their  own 
natures,  and  get  them  by  directed  thinking,  which 
is  the  only  truly  social  thinking,  to  unite  them- 
selves with  the  activities  of  the  world  of  humans 
about  them,  and  by  the  sacrifice  of  a  part  of  them- 
selves to  gain  what  is  of  far  greater  worth. 

G.  Hate,  rAnger  and  Love 

Every  physical  incapacity  may  be  caused  by 
the  defective  mental  action  of  the  psyche.    It  is, 


EDUCATIONAL  APPLICATIONS  305 

as  it  were,  a  conflict  between  a  moral  and  an  im- 
moral tendency,  or,  at  any  rate,  a  tendency  that 
runs  counter  to  the  accepted  standard  of  ethics 
conventional  at  the  time  or  place.  I  should  not 
appropriate  any  valuable  piece  of  property  not 
my  own,  because  someone  has  more  right  to  it 
than  I.  Now  if  I  think  of  doing  so,  it  appears 
that  the  psyche  becomes  at  once  the  scene  of  a 
battle  between  the  forces  that  desire  this  valued 
possession  and  those  that  do  not  think  it  right 
to  take  it.  If  those  that  desire  it  are  in  the  over- 
whelming majority,  so  that  the  disapproving  voices 
are  annihilated,  the  psyche  goes  on  as  a  unit,  after 
quelling  the  objectors  and  as  a  unit  maintains  its 
psychical  and  physical  health.  If,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  forces  opposing  it  are  very  much  more 
powerful  than  those  that  desire  it,  the  valuable 
piece  of  property  is  not  taken  and  the  psyche 
occupies  itself  with  other  and  more  productive 
objects.  But  if  the  forces  opposing  and  those 
favouring  the  theft  are  more  nearly  matched,  so 
that  the  struggle  becomes  more  doubtful,  then 
the  detriment  to  the  psyche  and  the  harm  to  the 
body  are  much  greater,  because  the  struggle  and 
the  vacillation  are  longer,  the  discord  is  more 
protracted,  and  growth  and  development  in  the 
right  way  is  stunted. 

There  is  something/  wholesome,  health-giving 
and  pleasure-giving  that  may  occupy  the  atten- 


306   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

tion  of  every  person  every  minute.  That  some- 
thing is  assuredly  not  angry  or  resentful  feelings 
against  the  fancied  insults  or  outrages  of  another 
person  or  persons.  It  is  not  destructive  action. 
Angry  thoughts  are  at  bottom  murderous 
thoughts.  There  is  in  every  angry  thought  an 
approximation  to  the  infantile,  a  regression,  an 
element  destructive  of  the  fabric  of  society,  which 
has  been  woven  over  or  through  the  substratum 
of  Titanic  states  of  the  psyche.  An  angry 
thought,  in  other  words,  symbolises  destruction. 
It  is  fancifully  projected  upon  our  enemy,  but  it 
takes  place  in  our  own  vitality.  Our  enemy  fre- 
quently does  not  even  know  of  its  existence. 
Like  the  tiger  shot  in  the  side,  that  immediately 
bites  the  wound  because  the  pain  is  there,  we 
damage  ourselves  by  hate.  Anger  and  hate  are 
symbols  of  destruction.  When  they  occur  in  us 
we  are  partially  and  progressively  destroyed. 
The  image,  visual  or  kinsesthetic,  which  we  have 
of  striking,  killing  or  otherwise  overcoming  our 
enemy,  we  are  conscious  of,  if  we  are  a  certain 
type  of  introspective  psychologist.  Otherwise 
we  do  not  become  conscious  of  it;  but  it  is  there 
and,  not  subject  to  conscious  control,  it  stam- 
pedes at  its  own  will,  and  we  know  of  its  results 
only  if  it  breaks  forth  later  in  some  deed,  hateful, 
murderous  or  insane,  or  in  some  unhealthiness  of 
body.  I  have  a  mental  picture  of  brushing  aside 


EDUCATIONAL  APPLICATIONS  307 

my  enemy,  knocking  him  into  the  river  or  under 
a  vehicle  or  off  a  precipice.  This  is  a  character- 
istic piece  of  infantile  symbolism,  it  is  the  object 
created  by  me  out  of  my  own  soul  on  which  I 
can  satisfy  my  desire  for  revenge.  I  thus  live 
in  a  world  of  my  own,  closing  my  avenues  of 
communication  with  the  real  world  which  is  con- 
stituted by  other  people.  My  reality  is  the  ac- 
tions of  other  people  and  things.  Now,  having 
this  mental  picture  of  destruction  in  my  mind's 
eye,  and  having  in  my  emotional  life  this  excita- 
tion connected  with  destruction  of  life,  I  cannot 
conceive  but  that  this  must  be  in  some  way  me- 
diated from  the  brain  via  the  sympathetic  nerv- 
ous system  to  the  purely  vegetative  tissues  of  the 
body  and  have  a  sort  of  catabolic  result  there. 
Possibly  when  we  know  more  we  may  know  just 
what  one  of  our  glands  is  made  anaemic  (or, 
figuratively  speaking,  withered)  by  exactly  what 
violation  of  the  law  of  society  that  we  have  com- 
mitted. The  cannibal  does  not  receive  physical 
detriment  from  eating  human  flesh,  because  he 
is  not  conscious  of  any  discord  between  his  act 
and  the  ideals  of  the  social  unit  of  which  he  is 
a  part.  The  civilised  human  would  be  harmed, 
both  physically  and  mentally,  by  a  similar  action 
only  if  he  knew  he  had  done  it. 

An  act  of  my  neighbour  is  apperceived  by  me 
as  hostile.    If  untrained  in  spiritual  things,  I  re- 


308 

sent  it  and  take  out  upon  myself  through  my 
images  of  destruction.  Of  these,  generally,  I  am 
conscious  only  if  psychologically  trained  in  intro- 
spection. If  I  am  not  so  trained,  the  images  re- 
main in  the  Unconscious  as  forces  that  run  coun- 
ter to  the  forward  developing  of  the  psyche. 
The  images  have  the  same  results  on  the  person 
who  entertains  them,  gloats  over  them,  rivets  his 
attention  upon  them,  as  the  imagined  acts  would 
themselves  have,  only  more  weakly  in  most  of  us, 
and  more  slowly.  Whether  the  image  evokes  the 
emotion  or  vice  versa  seems  to  me  to  make  no 
difference.  Image  and  emotion  are  so  very 
closely  connected  that  they  act  as  a  unit,  though 
it  must  be  noted  that  the  emotion  is  the  more 
likely  of  the  two  to  break  through  into  conscious- 
ness, where  indeed  it  may  be  associated  with  en- 
tirely different  ideas  from  those  which  originally 
caused  it. 

The  physical  organism  has  been  trained  by 
millennia  of  evolution  to  react  promptly  to  stim- 
uli affecting  its  nutrition,  self-preservation  and 
reproduction.  The  act  interpreted  as  hostile  may 
be  classified  only  roughly  as :  "  I'll  kill  or  be 
killed";  "  I'll  injure  or  be  injured."  Thousands 
of  years  of  prompt  reaction  on  similar  lines  must 
have  welded  together  the  image  of  the  enemy  and 
the  fear  of  death.  Now  when  the  light  of  con- 
sciousness has  begun  to  illuminate  so  much  of 


EDUCATIONAL  APPLICATIONS  309 

our  psychic  life,  we  repress  our  out-striking  mur- 
derous acts  and  we  enact  the  murder  in  our  own 
souls.  In  the  protoplasm  of  our  brains,  nervous 
systems,  glands  and  other  tissues — in  short,  in 
our  body-and-soul  combination — we  act  as  killer 
and  killed  at  one  and  the  same  time.  The  result 
is  that  something  is  killed  in  us  by  wrong  feeling 
and  thinking. 

Partial  death  either  of  body  or  mind  is  no 
impossible  conception.  As  a  literal  fact  parts 
of  our  bodies  die  daily.  Our  epidermis,  our 
nails,  hair,  perspiration  and  other  excreta  con- 
stitute a  stream  of  animal  tissue  that,  mostly 
dying  before  it  leaves  us,  we  pour  forth  each  day 
with  a  feeling  of  rejuvenation.  It  is  inconceiv- 
able that,  in  the  emotional  states  of  certain  types, 
we  do  not  destroy  a  subtle  force,  or  the  physical 
substratum  or  functional  capacity  of  such  force. 
'  You  fool ! "  says  my  enemy,  and  if  I  say 
'  Villain !  "  my  image  of  brushing  him  aside  is 
the  symbol  of  annihilation.  Thankful  should  I 
be  if  I  am  conscious  of  it  as  a  visual  or  kinass- 
thetic  image  and  know  enough  to  realise  that  if 
perpetuated  or  propagated  by  will,  desire  or  at- 
tention on  my  part,  it  will,  as  a  symbol,  itself 
teem  with  destructive  power  and  consume  the 
heart  that  warms  it. 

All  the  remarks  referring  to  hate  and  enmity 
may  be  made  mutatis  mutandis  about  love.    Just 


3io   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

as  the  neighbour's  act  that  was  interpreted  by 
me  as  hostile  aroused  in  me  a  desire  (grounded 
on  an  infantile  satisfaction)  to  annihilate  or  re- 
move the  neighbour,  so  the  act  of  another  per- 
son interpreted  by  me  as  friendly  naturally 
evokes  the  immediate  response  of  a  feeling  that 
I  wish  to  multiply  him  or  bring  him  nearer.  By 
multiply  him  I  mean,  of  course,  repeat  my  ex- 
periences of  him.  That  feeling  naturally  arouses 
in  me  the  feeling  of  nutrition,  anabolism,  propa- 
gation, etc.,  the  act  of  receiving  and  welcoming 
him  or  his  acts  being  a  symbol  of  increase,  de- 
velopment, growth.  It  is  now  conceivable  that 
the  number  of  those  whom  I  am  able  to  welcome 
is  a  measure  of  my  own  power.  What  I  can 
digest  is  what  I  have  the  stomach  for  (guts). 
Squeamishness,  on  the  contrary,  is  a  symbol  of 
weakness.  The  more  power  I  have,  the  less  I  am 
moved  by  Fortune's  buffets  and  rewards.  Those 
persons  who  want  to  appear  great-minded  will 
either  pretend  to  be  able  to  endure  much,  or  will 
after  deeper  thought  gradually  realise  that  there 
is  no  limit  to  human  endurance,  that  there  is  a 
power  in  each  and  every  one  of  us  which  will 
enable  us  to  go  any  lengths  in  doing  good  works. 
It  is  only  the  fear  of  personal  harm  that  steps 
in  and  acts  destructively  like  hate.  The  neces- 
sity of  fear  as  an  element  of  hate  will  be  evident 
when  we  remember  that  the  symbol  of  hate  is 


EDUCATIONAL  APPLICATIONS  311 

destruction.  I  shall  be  destroyed  if  I  do  not 
destroy  you.  Some  may  reply  that  we  who  live 
in  a  civilised  community  do  not  have  to  face  this 
alternative.  The  Unconscious,  however,  .does 
not  live  in  a  civilised  community.  It  is  an  archa- 
ism still  revivifying  for  and  in  us  the  antediluvian 
ages. 

This  alternative  necessarily  implies  fear  of 
being  destroyed;  otherwise  we  should  be  just  as 
curious  and  interested  in  making  an  experiment 
in  personal  destruction  as  we  are  in  anything  not 
involving  our  existence.  So  that  we  may  truth- 
fully say  that  we  hate  nothing  we  do  not  fear, 
or  further  that  if  we  are  afraid  of  nothing  we 
shall  like  everything.  If  I  am  unusually  fond  of 
one  thing,  that  supernormality  is  determined  by 
my  Unconscious.  Whatever  I  take  satisfaction 
out  of,  or  pleasure  in,  is  symbolic  of  my  present 
psychic  state.  Certain  likings  or  habits  unques- 
tionably symbolise  the  infantile,  such  as  thumb- 
sucking.  If  in  thumb-sucking  the  dissimilarities 
in  the  entire  mental  and  physical  complex  are  out- 
weighed by  the  similarities;  and  if  the  externals, 
such  as  movements  of  lips,  tongue  and  hands,  are 
so  important  in  comparison  with  the  absence  of 
nutrition  as  to  overbalance  even  the  injury  to 
finger  or  thumb  that  is  becoming  misshapen  or 
sore,  it  is  quite  likely  that  pipe-sucking  or  candy- 
sucking  or  tobacco-chewing  will  disregard  even 


312   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

more  dissimilarities  or  emphasise  even  more 
similarities  than  thumb-sucking. 

In  examining  the  actions  and  habits  that  serve 
as  symbols  we  shall  soon  come  to  the  very  justi- 
fiable conclusion  that  there  is  no  manifestation  of 
human  existence  that  does  not  serve  as  a  symbol 
of  something  other  than  what  it  seems  itself 
to  be. 

We  take  satisfaction  out  of  what  we  do,  or 
we  should  not  be  doing  it.  If  we  did  not  take 
satisfaction  out  of  it,  if  it(  did  not  fill  our  require- 
ments or  satisfy  our  desires,  they  would  be  dif- 
ferent There  would  occur  to  us  the  need  of 
some  other.  That  the  need  of  some  other  satis- 
faction has  not  occurred  to  us  is  a  proof  that  we 
are  thoroughly  satisfied  with  what  we  are  doing. 
A  reservoir  holding  one  gallon  has  no  empty 
space  in  it  when  it  contains  one  gallon.  A  reser- 
voir built  to  hold  a  hundred  gallons  is  miserably 
empty  if  it  contains  only  one  gallon.  Our  ca- 
pacity is  measured  by  our  dissatisfaction. 

Let  it  not  be  thought  that  because  there  are 
many  complainers  and  carping  critics  there  are 
many  dissatisfied  persons.  Complaining  is  in 
some  people  a  form  of  expressing  satisfaction. 
If  that  seems  too  paradoxical,  it  will  certainly 
be  admitted  that  fault-finding  and  complaining 
are  forms  of  satisfaction.  They  are  evidently 
the  form  selected  by  the  complaining  persons. 


EDUCATIONAL  APPLICATIONS  313 

They  symbolise,  or  represent  in  the  adult,  the 
crying  of  the  infant,  which  has  pleasure  for  him 
because  he  is  exercising  newly-found  powers. 
The  unconscious  popular  phrase  for  the  pleas- 
ure derived  from  complaining  is  found  in  the 
saying,  "  She  is  enjoying  poor  health." 

As  all  satisfactions  and  dissatisfactions  are  not 
expressed  by  words,  which  are  only  surrogates 
for  actions,  but  only  by  the  way  we  react  upon 
our  environment,  we  have  a  very  clear  indication 
of  the  exact  status  of  character  of  any  individual. 
For  instance,  an  irritable  person  is  ever  on  the 
alert  to  take  offence  because  he  is  constantly 
afraid  of  being  damaged.  He  has  not  much 
power,  and  fears  to  lose  what  he  has.  If  he  felt 
very  rich  in  every  kind  of  goods  he  would  be 
careless  of  defence.  If  his  resources  are  un- 
limited, he  will  always  have  more  than  enough 
for  himself  no  matter  how  much  may  be  taken 
from  him. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

CONCLUSION 

WE  have  seen  the  Unconscious  producing  its 
effects  in  our  mistakes  of  reading,  writing  and 
acting;  that  it  prevents  the  occurrence  to  the 
mind  of  whatever  is  emotionally  toned  in  an  un- 
pleasant way,  so  that  even  criminals  will  have 
their  thought  processes  arrested  for  a  measurably 
short  time  by  any  word  that  may  call  up  their 
crimes.  We  have  seen  that  the  unconscious  wish 
is  ever  active,  steering  our  behaviour  for  good 
or  bad  every  hour  of  our  waking  lives  and  supply- 
ing us  with  the  material  for  our  dreams  at  night. 
It  also  helps,  when  rightly  controlled,  in  solving 
our  problems  for  us,  as  we  frequently  find  that 
though  we  may  have  given  no  conscious  thought 
to  certain  questions,  our  minds  are  already  made 
up  on  those  points.  We  have  seen  that  there 
stands  in  the  way  of  the  direct  utterance  of  the 
literal  wishes  of  the  Unconscious  a  force  called 
the  psychic  censor,  representing  the  requirements 
of  society,  or  that  part  of  society  in  which  we 
live,  and  that  it  succeeds  in  preventing  the  appear- 
ance of  the  crassest  desires  in  our  consciousness, 

314 


CONCLUSION  315 

but  that  these  desires,  still  alive  in  the  Titan's 
world,  succeed  in  gaining  access  to  the  world  of 
consciousness  by  virtue  of  being  disguised  and 
appearing  as  symbols.  We  have  seen  that  the 
symbols  used  by  the  Unconscious  for  the  pur- 
pose of  gaining  admittance  to  our  conscious 
thoughts  are  of  the  most  varied  nature.  In  fact, 
there  is  no  mental  state,  there  is  no  physical  ex- 
pression of  a  mental  state,  that  is  not  a  symbol, 
from  the  way  we  address  a  meeting  to  the  way  we 
cut  our  finger  nails  and  the  colour  of  neckties  and 
other  clothing  that  we  wear.  The  symbol  may  be 
a  turn  of  thought  shown  in  the  use  of  a  bit  of 
slang  or  a  figure  of  speech,  or  it  may  be  a  hys- 
teria, or  a  phobia  or  an  eczema  or  a  constipation 
or  an  attack  of  exophthalmic  goitre.  In  psycho- 
analysis, which  is  the  only  means  as  yet  dis- 
covered for  penetrating  for  any  distance  into  the 
depths  of  the  Unconscious,  we  have  a  method 
by  which,  if  it  is  rightly  carried  out,  we  may  be 
relieved  of  a  great  deal  of  the  worry  which  be- 
sets our  modern  urban  existence,  a  method  of 
understanding  and  therefore  of  better  appreciat- 
ing our  fellows,  of  reading  their  hearts  behind 
their  actions,  which  makes  the  passing  show  have 
for  all  of  us  a  deeper  meaning  and  a  greater  in- 
terest, and  finally  we  have,  unless  I  am  greatly 
mistaken,  seen  the  cause  why  so  much,  of  modern 
scholastic  education  is  so  unsatisfactory,  both  to 


3i6   MAN'S  UNCONSCIOUS  CONFLICT 

the  teacher  and  to  the  pupil,  for  with  the  knowl- 
edge that  the  Unconscious  plays  so  great  a  part  in 
behaviour  of  both  instructor  and  instructed  comes 
the  realisation  that  it  is  an  essentially  hopeless 
task  to  try  to  do  what  we  are  now  trying  to  do 
with  the  pupil.  It  is  only  when  the  newer  psy- 
chology is  communicated  to  the  teacher  that  a 
real  progress  will  be  made  in  educating  the  chil- 
dren in  schools,  both  elementary  and  secondary. 
The  material  progress  of  the  last  century  has 
been  enormous.  Space  and  time  have  both  been 
triumphed  over;  but  men's  souls  are  as  unedu- 
cated as  they  were  thousands  of  years  ago.  So 
that  we  may  say  to  ourselves,  with  a  deeper  mean- 
ing than  ever  has  been  possible : 

"For  thou  hast  driven  the  foe  without, 
See  to  the  foe  within." 


INDEX 


Abreaction,  252 

Adler,  A.,  258 

Adult,  86 

Ambivalence,  132 

Analogy,  233,  295 

Analysand,  146 

Analysis,  148 

Anger,  304 

Antagonism,  279 

Artlessness,    109 

Association   test,    108 

Attitude  toward  Uncon- 
scious, 121 

Bertschinger,   quoted,   255 

Bisexuality,  134,  273 

Bleuler,  quoted,  184 

Blindness,   222,  239 

Censor,  71,  72 

Christian  Science,  253 

Complex,  31,   112 

Complex  indicator,  115 

Condensation  in  dreams, 
158 

Conflicts,  no 

Consecutiveness,  lack  of,  ni 

Constipation,  68 

Conversation,  84 

Conversion,  221,  238,  267 

Craving,  30,  51,  93 

Day-dreaming,  247 

Directed  thinking,  26,  124 

Disinclination,  120 

Displacement  in  dreams,  160 

Dramatisation  in  dreams,  167 

Dreams,  144 

Drink,  55,  74 

Education,  265 

Elan  vital,  51 


Electra,  31,  138,  note 
Emotions,  62 
Erogenous  zones,  128 
Everyday  actions,  104,  200 
Excitement,  100 
Exhibitionism,  131,  283 
Exophthalmic  goitre,  227 
Fate,  88 

Father-image,  142,  273 
Fatigue,  124 
Fixation,  32 
Fore-conscious,  38 
Forgetting,  62,  65,  209 
Freud,  S.,  i,  note,  3,  4,  5,  6, 

7,    10,   n,  49,   72,  91,   128, 

165,  168,  169,  172,  203,  242 
Gravitation,  psychic,  244 
Hate,  304 

Hero-worship  stage,  134 
Homosexual  stage,  134 
Horme,  51 
Husband  and  wife,  34,   117, 

140 

Hysteria,  68 
Image,  142 
Incest,  27,  138 
Infant,  83,  140 
Infantile  in  dreams,  171 
Inferiority,  56,  258 
Interpretation,  150 
Intolerability,  95 
Introversion,  82 
Irritation,  284 
James,  William,  quoted,  48, 

233,  245 

Jocasta,  28,  137 
Jones,  Ernest,  16 
Jung,  C.  G.,  173,  174,  '94 


317 


3  1205  00484  1035 


3i8 


INDEX 


Kaplan,  41,  71,  215 
Lapsus  lingua,  211 
Latent  content,  151 
Libido,  12,  51  (see  also: 

Craving) 
Love,  304 

Manifest  content,  151 
Masochism,  131 
Memory,  see:  Retentiveness, 

Forgetting 
Memory  work,  293 
Mental    activity,    object    of, 

266 

Mental  healing,  253 
Moral  struggle,  220 
Mother,  33,  117,  137,  139 
Mother-image,  142 
Mother-infant  relation,  101 
Moving-pictures,    196 
Narcissism,  131 
Neologisms,  206 
Nirvana,  127 

CEdipus  myth,  18,  28,  136 
Over-determination,  159 
Pain,  85,  127,  262 
Pfister,  O.,  68,  119,  121,  203, 

225,  254,  264,  271 
Phantasy,  53 
Pharaoh,  dreams  of,  153 
Phobia,  118 

Pleasure-pain,  85,  112,  127 
Psyche,  The  individual,  127 
Psychic  gravitation,  244 
Psychotherapy,  220 
Rationalisation,  16 
Reality,  85,  93,  127 
Reasoning  by  analogy,  233 
Regression,  88 
Repression,  50 


Resentment,  308 
Resistances,  107,  148 
Resymbolisation,  257 
Retentiveness,  45 
Sadism,  131,  289 
Schizophrenia,  217 
Secondary      elaboration      in 

dreams,  161 
Self-abuse,  133 
Sex,  10,  130,  229 
Socrates'     maieutic    method, 

174 

Sublimation,  80 
Superiority,  57,  280 
Symbolism,  67 
Sympathy,  191 
Symptomatic  actions,  212 
Thackeray,  quoted,  172 
Thinking,  abstract,  301 
Thinking,  directed,  26,  124 
Thinking,  two  kinds  of,  176 
Thinking,  undirected,  124,  183 
Thoughts,  source  of,  98 
Thumb-sucking,  129,  311 
Titans,  i,  20,  22,  54,.  50, 
Transference,  260 
Typical  dreams,  152 
Unconscious,  8r  40,  43,  48 
Undirected  thinking,  124,  183 
Unknown  element  in  action, 

14 

Vitality  of  Unconscious,  65, 

177 

Wish,  144,  168 
Wish-fulfilment    in    dreams, 

168 

Worry,  101 
Zones,  erogenous,  128 


8F 
173 

L35 


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